


Respite

by jelenedra



Category: Pacific Rim
Genre: (well almost), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Babies, Drunken Shenanigans, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Families of Choice, Fluff, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Kaiju, M/M, Multi, Never Have I Ever, POV Multiple, Polyamory, Team Bonding, Threesome - F/M/M, author gets carried away, author's primary research source was tvtropes, fight scenes are really hard to write, jaegercon gift exchange, newt and hermann are the new science bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelenedra/pseuds/jelenedra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team get a two year reprieve before Otachi and Leatherback have a chance to surface. What do they do with this time?</p><p>Drink, gossip, and hook up, mostly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [omnia_sol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/omnia_sol/gifts).



> So this was going to be a short fluffy team-bonding fic and... it kind of got away from me. Part Two ~~coming as soon as my betas stop staring at me in horror~~ is up!

“Almost two years.”

“Two _years?_ ” Newt stares. “Two years. Of no kaiju. No kaiju _at all._ ” This makes no sense. This makes less sense than building a giant wall to stop kaiju. “Two _years._ ”

“If targeted correctly.” 

Newt stares some more. Hermann’s face has taken on a faintly grey cast and there are deep purple bags under his eyes. In the lower left corner of his blackboard, his writing has trailed off into an illegible mess. As far as Newt can tell, though, the math is solid. 

Hermann sways on his feet, but when Newt starts forward to help he’s waved off. Newt hesitates. As soon as he’s sure Hermann’s not going to collapse, he bolts for the door. 

“Marshall! Marshall! _Marshall!_ ”

-

_728_

Stacker is ready to put his head in his hands and give into despair when the phone finally rings. Halfway into the conversation he sends a message to Mako. 

Mako leads his pilots in just as he’s finishing up. 

“Yes. Yes, I understand. Thank you, Prime Minister. We’ll use it well.” He sets the phone down.

Hansen the Younger scrunches up his face. “That wasn’t our PM, was it?” 

Herc digs his elbow into his son’s ribs. “You wanted to see us, Marshall?”

Stacker sweeps his eyes across them: the Kaidanovskies discreetly holding hands; the Weis trying their hardest to look disciplined in basketball shorts; the Hansens, one straight and proud, one slouching; and Becket, a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Becket keeps looking at Mako. Stacker feels his brows beginning to crease and has to force them back into passivity. 

He glances at the clock, then back at them. “We have been granted a reprieve.”

Even Chuck stands straight at that. 

“Two days ago, Doctor Hermann Gottlieb found a way to temporarily seal the breach. Seventeen minutes ago, ANZAC forces successfully carried out a mission to do exactly that.

“In light of the recent failures of the Wall of Life project, Australia and New Zealand have agreed to provide us with the resources to create and pilot a new series of jaegers. If Doctor Gottlieb’s calculations are correct, we have a little less than two years before the Kaiju return.”

Most of his pilots are too disciplined to show their shock or their relief on their faces, but he can read it in the little movements of their shoulders and fingers and the pattern of their breathing. 

“This is a triumph for humanity.” Stacker meets each pair of eyes in turn. “But we must not become complacent. Each of you will be integral to our ongoing success.”

-

_727_

“He wants me to _teach?_ ”

“Yes,” Mako says, with what she feels is admirable patience.

“No, but, for real?”

“We have had this same exchange six times now. All the pilots are teaching, Mister Becket.”

“Jesus,” Raleigh mutters. Then again, louder: “ _Jesus._ ”

“I will teach too,” Mako says. “So will everyone else.”

Raleigh stops suddenly and turns to her, wide-eyed. “Hold up, does that mean _Chuck_ will be teaching?”

“I would have thought that was implied.”

Raleigh’s eyes light up and he starts to giggle, a sound made high and strained by the way he tries to choke the laughter back down. Mako leaves him hunching in on herself in the corridor. When she can no longer hear his cackling she allows herself to roll her eyes.

Newt and Hermann are bickering again. Even their moment of triumph must pale compared to the issue of who stole whose chalk. 

Mako cannot recall her biological mother’s face any more; her memories are of the scent of jasmine petals and a white dress overlaid with blue lace. She remembers many words of wisdom, though, whispered into her ear as they watched TV or put forward across the table as they sat down. Among them: speak loudly, and they will drown you out; speak softly, and they will silence themselves to listen.

“Gentlemen,” Mako says, soft as falling snow. They fall back to their corners and she smiles to reward them. “Marshall Pentecost sent me to ask your professional opinions. He would like to know...” It takes her a moment to translate the idea in her head. “Who we should seek out to lead the production of new jaegers.”

“Vanessa Sharp,” Hermann says.

Newt glowers and opens his mouth, stops, closes his mouth, opens it again. “As much as I hate to admit it, Herm’s probably right. She’s the best.”

“Do not call me _Herm,_ ” Hermann hisses. “Miss Mori, Vanessa—Doctor Sharp was Striker Eureka’s lead designer, and has assisted in the design and construction of several other successful jaegers. No one else is as qualified.”

“Very well, Doctor Gottlieb,” Mako says. “If Doctor Geiszler has no objection?”

“Why would I object?” Newt has already turned back to his specimens. “Sharp’s the best. If she’s interested, we should get her.”

“And you believe she will be interested, Doctor Gottlieb?”

Hermann hesitates. “She... may not be available until May or June. But then, certainly.” 

“Very well.” Mako bows a little before she catches herself. “Thank you for your time, gentlemen. I will leave you to your work.” 

As she turns to leave, she can hear Newt’s voice. 

“How do you know so much about Sharp, huh? Does Herm have a crush?”

The door swings closed behind her, cutting off Hermann’s inevitable reply. Mako smiles into her sleeve. 

“So.”

Mako startles. Tendo steps back out of the range of her fists and raises his hands, palms open and facing her. 

“Easy, tiger. Hey, do you think Hermann will tell Newt?”

Mako smiles when she finds the words she want. “If Doctor Geiszler has not yet read the personnel dossiers, I do not think Doctor Gottlieb will enlighten him.”

-

_703_

Raleigh has to duck and weave between at least twenty scaffolds before he can find Mako and his gaggle of new students. The majority are fraternal siblings, with a scattering of couples and identical twins and triplets. Pentecost has plans for thirty or more jaegers, and to that end has recruited enough pilot candidates to man at least sixty. 

He arrives in time for the tail end of Mako’s lecture.

“Many of you will not be drift compatible.” She’s only just audible over the sound of welding and hammering and shouting coming from most of the scaffolds. “Many of you will not have the ability to synchronise with a jaeger. This is not a reflection of your abilities; it is the nature of the technology.” 

The recruits are all more or less still and silent, which Raleigh is grateful for. Very few are actually military. He swallows and dries his sweating palms on the sides of his jeans. 

“Mister Becket will be introducing you to the neural drift hardware today.” Mako gestures at him without turning her head. Over a hundred pairs of eyes flick his way. Raleigh raises a hand in a feeble wave. 

He can see Chuck, leaning up against Striker Eureka’s foot on the other side of the hangar. Chuck is watching. Chuck is _smirking._ It’s enough to firm his resolve, if not quite enough to steel it entirely.

Mako continues as though she’s never been nervous a day in her life. For all he knows, that might be the literal truth. “Your results over the next few weeks will determine which of you stay, and which of you go. Good luck.” And just like that she’s gone, her blue-streaked bob vanishing around a corner. Raleigh swallows. 

“Well, uh. Hi.” They are all paying attention to him. His palms are sweating again. “So, uh, what do you guys know about the neural drift?”

They don’t know much, as it turns out, with the exception of one woman who has extensive ta moko and a degree in neuropsychology. It makes it easier; Raleigh just goes over the basics, exactly as they were told to him, plus a few things he wishes he’d known the first time he’d linked in. 

When he runs out of the simple stuff, he leads them over to the simulator. It’s very like the one he trained on in Anchorage. Tendo and Newt put it together in six days flat. Raleigh’s not actually sure how smart it is to trust a human brain to those two, but Pentecost would have shut it down if he had doubts. 

“So, uh, today we’ll just be getting you set up with these.” He points at the neat stack of generic spinal plates and headsets. Once everyone knows their size, Tendo can start handing out sterile neural connectors. “Tomorrow you’ll be trying it out for real. You’re probably not going to get a strong connection your first time out, it’s more so you can get used to it. Oh, uh, also, if you have anything big that you’re hiding from each other, now’s the time to clear the air. You really don’t want that kind of thing coming out in the drift. Take it from me.” He pulls an exaggerated expression of disgust, and a few of them chuckle. 

Mako returns, leading the other pilots. Raleigh wanders through the crowd, helping out where he can. Pentecost wants them to pick their teams quickly, so the construction teams can make jaeger sets that complement each of the experienced units. 

Mako watches Raleigh wipe his hands on his jeans for the third time and nudges him with her elbow. “You’re doing very well.”

Raleigh nudges her back and grins. 

-

_685_

The hangar is filled with sheets of titanium alloy and the kind of power tools his dad would drool over. Chuck slides a square red box out of the way with his foot, wincing as wires trail out behind it. 

“Shit.” He nudges the wires out of his way as well and weaves more carefully through the minefield of struts and rivets and arc welders. 

The Hansen(PC)Hansen pilot team is first in almost every ranking, and only just behind Pentecost(NR)Sevier and Răzvan(SI)Răzvan in a few. Chuck is the best jaeger pilot still serving. It’s just a fact. After Sydney, he’d decided he wanted to kill kaiju, and then he’d made it happen. He knows Striker like he knows the back of his hand. Better, even, since he doesn’t actually spend his days learning the back of his hand.

Chuck knows how to keep his balance when a kaiju is tearing at the Conn-Pod, when to switch from ranged fire to close combat, the best possible mental state for maintaining a strong drift... but it’s been years since the Academy, and he does all those things by instinct now. He has no idea how to explain it to people who’ve barely mastered a simulator, and they know he has no idea. He’s pretty sure every lesson he’s given without his dad has been an abysmal failure.

Becket’s probably been pissing himself laughing. 

The recruits mostly pause and step back as he passes, same as they would for any other pilot. Chuck isn’t sure why that makes him grit his teeth, but it does. Most of them are reading schematics or practicing a stripped-down form of jaeger jutsu. A couple are on the simulators. One of them is actually dumb enough to argue with Mako Mori.

“It’s completely ridiculous!”

“All of your peers are required to manage a similar load, Mister Kent.” Chuck’s pretty sure that Mako’s steely expression is one she borrowed from Pentecost, or maybe a Kaidanovsky. “And every pilot here managed the same in their training. If you cannot, you are welcome to leave.”

Chuck steps up behind Mako’s shoulder and glares at Kent. The recruit blinks at him, blinks at Mako, then mutters “Yes ma’am,” and leaves in a rush. 

“Thank you, Mister Hansen.” Mako turns around to face him with the least friendly smile he’s ever seen on a human face. 

“It’s, uh...” Chuck scratches the back of his head. “I’m sorry I called you bitches and tried to beat up your copilot.” 

Mako’s eyes widen. So does her smile, sudden warmth lighting up her face. “I accept your apology, Chuck. You should offer it to Raleigh, as well.”

Chuck feels himself grimacing before he can stop himself. “I don’t think it’ll go down well.”

“You may be surprised.” Mako pats his arm briskly. “You are teaching basic kaiju combat with Sasha and Cheung tomorrow. They would like you to meet them to prepare.” 

“Meet where?” 

Too late. Mako’s gone, weaving between techs and recruits. Chuck sighs and heads for Striker. If nothing else, Sasha will know to look for him there.

\- 

_622_

“I think it’ll work.”

“I would prefer to hear a little more certainty.”

Newt gives serious thought to sticking his tongue out at Hermann. “I _know_ the machine’s ready. But what if we left it too long and the brain degraded? Kaiju don’t have anything like myelin, it could—” 

Hermann slaps the squid cap onto Newt’s head. 

Newt takes the hint. “Fine, fine. Okay.” He flicks on the recorder. “Kaiju-human drift experiment, take one. Doctor Newton Geiszler and Doctor Hermann Gottlieb drifting, with Marshall Stacker Pentecost and Tendo Choi in attendance.” 

Tendo looks up from his fifth cup of coffee. “Oh, you’re starting? Took your time.”

“Shut up, Choi.” Newt checks that everything’s fitting right. Hermann’s doing much the same. Apparently his calculations had indicated that the neural load of drifting with a kaiju would be too much for one human brain, so the arrogant bastard had insisted on inserting himself into Newt’s experiment. “Hermann, try to think happy thoughts for once in your miserable life, okay?”

Hermann sneers but doesn’t respond. He looks faintly sick. Newt has a moment of schadenfreude before he drags his brain back to where he wants it—innocuous, gentle memories, like petting kittens, and the smell of roasting coffee, and dissecting a kaiju liver.

“Ready boys?” Tendo leans back in his chair and glances at Pentecost for approval. Pentecost nods, once. “Beginning neural handshake in three... two... one...”

Everything goes blue, and then _air thick with the smell of chalk and leather and the faint vanilla of old, old books_ flipping through a neurobiology textbook with his left hand and petting Molly with the right. Her fur was so soft, and she purred like a tiny engine trying to turn over _pulls her long, elegant hands free of the machine, arms blackened to the elbow. She flicks drops of motor oil at him, aiming to miss_ ducking under the arc of the water bomb with a yelp, not quite avoiding the edges of the spray as it burst _shower of sparks from an arc welder in the corner of his eye_ watching them place the last rivets _calculating the strength of kaiju against the strength of half a dozen alloys_ kaiju blue into a petri dish, watching through the scope as it ate away at _coloured tattoos over the delicate lines of his wrists_ heavy gloves to protect him until he gets the chance to _running the numbers again and again, always the same result_ exactly the same at the cellular level but impossibly different everywhere else _there is a missing variable_

They sync.

The mind of the kaiju is simple. She has a task, and she performs that task. She does not eat or rest until that task is done. Newt could spend hours here, days, picking apart the instincts, but Hermann is violently, intensely disturbed, and so Newt is too. 

“Gentlemen.” Pentecost’s voice cuts through the fog. “What do you see?”

“Just—just—” Newt’s drifted before, so has Hermann, _“Please just try it, the pilots all fucked off to the Fox and I can’t make it work right,”_ and together they press in deeper into the kaiju’s mind.

 _Tell them._ Shut up I’m about to. 

“They have...a hive mind. They all remember.” This kaiju remembers being Trespasser, and Hundun, and Kaiceph, and Scissure, and all of the dozens and dozens of kaiju after. “They, they remember, and learn, and they learned to start going after the pilots first.”

It’s weird, because Newt is looking down at his hands, but Hermann’s looking at Pentecost, and so Newt sees Pentecost go tense all over without really seeing it _stop distracting yourself with the mechanics_ Jesus, Herm.

“They’re, uh, they’re, they’re... being... assembled.” When he says it he knows it to be true. The kaiju remembers the last piece being put in place, the primary brain, the one that let her see and hear the things every other kaiju saw and heard. The Precursors had her move, stand, walk, slash at the air, before they started sealing up her skin with glowing lines of blue, just as they had every other kaiju. She was new, and different. The last kaiju was killed with fire, so she has thick skin with heavy bone plates. 

“Oh, God,” Hermann mumbles. “It’s an arms race.”

They’re both bleeding from the nose, and Newt isn’t sure if that creeping nausea belongs to him or to Hermann, and she is killed, armour shattered by missiles from what he recognises as Striker Eureka’s chest launcher, but the Precursors have the data and next time they will send new, better kaiju. The breach is sealed but they have waited for so long already, they can wait a little more.

The drift ends. Hermann pulls off his cap, takes three perfectly normal strides, doubles over, and vomits perfunctorily into the trashcan. Newt breaths out a heavy sigh when the nausea disappears, then drops. His knees smack against the stone floor. It really hurts.

Pentecost helps him stand and shoves a wad of tissue at his nose. Newt mumbles the best approximation of thanks he can give. It takes him a few minutes to get his shit together.

“You have half an hour to recover, gentlemen.” Newt feels a flicker of irritation at Pentecost’s tone. He’s pretty sure it isn’t his, which is worrying. “Then we will debrief in my office.”

-

_600_

There are only thirty-two pilot teams left out of the seventy-one originally recruited. Hermann has examined the data for each remaining team, analysed their strengths and weaknesses, and sent it to Vanessa, alongside the reports compiled by each of the senior pilots and Newton’s reports on the finding of their drift.

When she doesn’t respond within twenty-four hours he begins to worry.

She calls him on Skype a few minutes after he resolves to commandeer a satellite in search of her. He drinks in her face. Vanessa looks exhausted, and elated, and she’s holding a tiny bundle in her arms. 

It’s an entirely ridiculous notion, but for a moment Hermann swears he could feel his heart stop. 

“Six pounds exactly,” she says. “Somewhat under the statistical average but well within normal parameters. Ten fingers, ten toes, et cetera—”

“My God,” Hermann breathes. Vanessa lifts the baby up so he can see her. The tiny face screws up, then smoothes out again when Vanessa strokes a fingertip down her cheek. “She’s beautiful.”

“Well, she is now.” Vanessa resettles the infant against her chest, tugging at the blankets until Hermann can see her face clearly. “She was pretty gross looking when she came out. There are pictures, I’ll send them.”

“Please.” Hermann cannot find any other words. He lifts his hand and traces over the computer screen, enraptured by the sight of his daughter. She's so small, and she seems pale, although perhaps that is only compared to Vanessa. His stomach is churning and when he looks at his fingers he can see them trembling. “She’s terrifying.”

“Mmm, that’s nor—” Vanessa yawns widely and shakes her head. “Normal. Happened to me too. Give it twenty minutes and you’ll be feeling homicidally protective love instead.”

Hermann evaluates his emotional state. _Homicidally protective_ remains absent, but _love_ is seeping in through the brief flash of fear. 

“Did you name her?”

“Roslin Maria, like we said.” Vanessa leans back into the pillows. “I’m going to give it a month, maybe, and then we’ll come out and see you, and my other baby, and your pretty tattooed cabin boy—”

“He is neither pretty, nor my cabin boy.”

“He is _very_ pretty.” She grins at him, the same wicked, sharp-edged smile he fell in love with years ago. “Oh, I sent you some jaeger designs, from that data—”

“Merciful Christ, Vanessa, when did you have a chance to start on those?”

“I had my tablet in the delivery ward. It took my mind off things. They’re probably not—” she yawns again, even wider this time, “not very good. I’m sorry, darling, I’m falling asleep, but give them to... whoever. I love you.”

He stays silent, watching his wife and daughter. Even when Vanessa does fall asleep, he stays. He keeps watching for almost an hour before he ends the call, prints the designs, and takes them to Pentecost.

\- 

_593_

Don’t think about how hot her dad is. Don’t think about how hot her dad is. Don’t think about _I can see you thinking about not thinking about it._ Shit. _Don’t worry, I get this all the time. But maybe think about Chuck, instead._

Well, Mako certainly has learned how to distract him. Thinking about Chuck doesn’t make Raleigh angry any more, which is good, but it does make him other things he probably shouldn’t be inflicting on his copilot. 

Of course, his copilot tends to inflict those kinds of thoughts on him whenever they think about Sasha Kaidanovsky, so maybe it’s just karma. 

Tendo’s voice sounds in his ear piece. “All right, Gipsy Danger, let’s fire up those swords.”

Mako leads them through the movements. Raleigh’s a little behind, but Gipsy doesn’t exactly move at the speed of thought, so it hardly counts. They stab, slash, parry, lunge. _Her grandfather always smelled of sweat and hot metal. She was too small to lift a sword, even using both hands, but now she has the kind of weapon her grandfather would never have dreamed of._ Raleigh gives Mako’s memory a little more attention than he should when they’re practicing—his own thoughts are full of their first, disastrous drift. She doesn’t chase the RABIT, though, just lets the memory slide away. _I know what I’m doing, Raleigh. Look to yourself._

Tendo has them test out the plasma caster—unloaded, this time—and the elbow thrusters. They even charge up the pulse launcher, carefully aimed away from LOCCENT. In the insular, faintly blue world of the Conn-Pod, it feels like days might be passing. Raleigh isn’t sore or sweaty when he finally disengages from the combat rig, so it can’t have been long at all. 

Mako links her arm with his as they step onto the platform that will carry them down from the pod. Raleigh leans his head against hers as they descend. The scaffolds around the hangar are finally filling up with the skeletons of jaegers, mostly built along Striker’s lines, though he can see a little of Cherno and Gipsy here and there. There’s one in the far corner that looks like it’ll one day be a perfect replica of Kaikoura Vengeance, even. 

“Did you ever see Kaikoura in action?” Mako asks. Raleigh isn’t sure if she followed the direction of his eyes or of his thoughts, but in the end it doesn’t matter.

“Not in person. I saw the vids.”

“I saw her right before her last deployment,” Mako says. “You have not lived until you’ve seen a jaeger doing a haka.” Raleigh snorts. “You know Te Rangi? She’s Tameura Ihimaera’s cousin.”

It takes Raleigh a second to place the name. “She’s one of the ladies with the ta moko? The really nerdy one?”

“What are ta moko?”

“Maori facial tattoos. A couple of the NZ recruits have them.”

“Yes, then.”

He’s still a little fuzzy when they finally strip out of their suits, and ends up draping an arm over Mako’s shoulders. The Hansens arrive just as they’re leaving. Herc just nods at them and strides past, but Chuck stops awkwardly. 

“Is there something you need, Chuck?” Mako says politely. 

Chuck glowers at her, shifts his weight from foot to foot, glowers at Raleigh. “Hey Riley, we should spar some time.”

“It’s Raleigh,” Raleigh says automatically. Then he has to backtrack. “Wait, really?”

Chuck sneers. “Unless you’re not man enough to face me.”

That sounds a lot more familiar. Raleigh takes a breath and releases it, squeezes Mako’s shoulder. “I’d be happy to spar with you, Chuck. Let me know what time works for you.” Chuck looks honestly surprised by that. He mutters something Raleigh doesn’t catch and pushes past them. Raleigh turns to Mako. “What the hell was that?”

“He’s trying to be nice,” Mako says. “Like a cat leaving dead birds in your bed.”

Raleigh tries not to laugh, he really does, but then Mako wiggles her eyebrows suggestively and he’s lost. 

-

_582_

“Herm. Hey, Herm.”

No response. Time to bring out the big guns.

“Doctor Gottlieb.”

Hermann does look up at that, though his eyes aren’t really focussing. He always seems to be somewhere on the edge between _distracted_ and _douchebag_ , but today is apparently leaning towards the former. “What is it, Newton?”

“I wanted to ask you about something I saw in the drift.” Newt can tell they’re on the same page by the way Hermann immediately drops eye contact. Hermann may not have great social skills, but he does know when he’s cornered. “You really like my tattoos, huh?”

Hermann blushes. This may be the greatest day of Newt’s life.

“Hey, it’s cool! I just... didn’t know.” Hermann still won’t look at him, so Newt presses his luck, getting right into Hermann’s personal space. “I mean, if you wanted to get a closer look some time—”

He doesn’t manage to get anything else out, because Hermann kisses him. As it turns out Hermann is a really good kisser, warm and firm and with maybe just a little bit more teeth than Newt is used to, which is weird until he bites at Newt’s lower lip and then rapidly becomes just pure awesome. Newt’s glasses are mashed painfully against the bridge of his nose and his arms are flailing helplessly somewhere in the background, but he really doesn’t mind, because now Hermann’s tongue is in his mouth and this is, for real, the _greatest_ day of Newt’s life. 

Eventually Hermann draws back. He’s not even breathing heavily, the bastard, while Newt pants for air. Newt takes one big step back.

“Um, hold up, I mean, not that I’m not super into this, but there was that lady I saw in the drift—”

“My wife,” Hermann says. “She won’t mind.”

“She won’t mind? As in, like, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her? Because I’m kind of not okay with that—”

“She knows, Newton.” Hermann is using the most exasperated voice in his arsenal, the one that normally makes Newt want to throw kaiju guts at him, but not today, because his internal monologue is all taken up with _he wants in my pants, holy shit._ “We have an arrangement. She’ll want to know how open to threesomes you are—”

Hermann keeps talking, but Newt doesn’t really register it, because his brain shorted out at the word _threesomes._ After a minute he registers that Hermann has stopped talking and is now probably waiting for a reply.

“Wow,” he manages. After a minute, he adds, “I gotta say, Herm, you’re a lot kinkier than I was expecting.”

“If you insist on calling me _Herm,_ ” Hermann says icily, “I can certainly see about giving you a spanking.”

Newt’s jaw actually literally drops in a way he used to think only happened in cartoons. He doesn’t say anything else, though, because Pentecost takes that moment to walk in, and Hermann goes all professionalism and poise like nothing ever happened.

 _Holy shit,_ he thinks, over and over again, like a litany against madness. _Holy fucking shit._

-

_579_

Raleigh goes in for an armbar, but Chuck’s onto his tricks now and twists away just in time, bouncing his elbow lightly off the side of Raleigh’s head as he goes. “Come on, old timer, keep up!”

Raleigh bounces out of the way when Chuck follows up with a kick to his knee, sidesteps his punch, puts some distance between them. Chuck tenses, waiting for the movement. 

Raleigh comes in like a freight train, drops his torso and rams his shoulder hard into Chuck’s gut. The air leaves Chuck’s lungs in a rush, and he finds himself flat on his back. Raleigh backs off enough to let him breathe, but his hard, muscular thighs are still pinning Chuck’s hips to the mat. 

Chuck is definitely going to jerk off to this later. 

When he doesn’t laugh or swear or offer a smart remark after a couple seconds, Raleigh backs off entirely. “You okay, shortstop?”

“Fuck you,” Chuck moans. He scrubs a hand over his face. “What the hell, you’re like forty, you’re not meant to be that fucking fast.”

“I am _twenty-six,_ ” Raleigh says. His foot hits Chuck in the ribs, not really hard enough to be called a kick. “Fuck _you,_ you goddamn infant.”

Chuck endures another nudge to the ribs before he rolls to his feet, giving his lungs a chance to refill. “Yeah, well—” he turns and lunges for Raleigh’s knees. Raleigh clearly isn’t expecting it—he goes down hard, automatically slapping the mat to break his fall. Chuck puts him in a leg lock. Raleigh’s other foot smacks him hard in the chest a few times, but Chuck holds on until he finally feels Raleigh tap. He lets go and bounds to his feet, whooping. “Suck on that, grandpa!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Raleigh gets up with a grin. 

Chuck has to send Mako flowers or something. Sparring with Raleigh was definitely the best idea she’s ever had, and she’s had a couple of doozies over the years. Chuck’s pretty sure Raleigh still doesn’t like him, and maybe that won’t ever happen, but after an hour or so of pounding the crap out of each other they can talk and laugh like they’re friends. It’s made the past few months a lot easier.

It’s also giving Chuck a lot of fantasy material. His dad had been horrified when some of it had gotten through the drift, but Chuck once had to see the memory of his own conception. His dad can suck it up. 

They take a break without having to talk about it, gulping down water and towelling off some of the sweat. After a minute, Chuck says, “You know Raleigh, you aren’t nearly as much of a tool as I thought you were.”

“Sorry to say this, Chuck, but you are _exactly_ as much of a tool as I thought you were.” Raleigh punches his shoulder. “But maybe not as much of a douchebag.”

Chuck snorts and punches back. 

\- 

_570_

“Excuse me, is Hermann Gottlieb around at all?”

Newt looks up from his slide. A very pretty lady with an extremely broad Australian accent is peering around his door. He shakes his head. “He’s off with the brass right now. He’ll be back soon, though, want to come in?”

The woman glances at his slides. “You don’t have any uncontained kaiju blue in there, do you?”

“God, no! All this stuff’s been neutralised. Completely inert.”

The lady grins at him and comes in. Newt immediately realises why she was worried—there’s a very tiny baby strapped to her chest. “Thanks. Can’t be too careful, you know. I wasn’t sure I should come at all.”

“I’m Newt. Uh, Doctor Newton Geiszler,” he says. 

“Oh, sorry. Vanessa Sharp.” She crosses the room and shakes his hand briskly. “I read your paper on silicate nucleotides. Very cool stuff.”

Newt gapes at her for a second, then grins. “Thanks! I saw Striker Eureka take down Mutavore, that was _awesome_.”

“Aw man, I haven’t seen my baby in action for years.” Sharp sighs. “I mean, I see it on TV and all, and my hubby sends me the data, but it’s just not the same.”

Newt blinks. “Hold up, your hubby?”

“Me,” Hermann says from the door. 

Sharp’s up and across the room before Newt even registers that she’s moving, and she and Hermann get into the kind of lip lock that would normally involve a lot less clothing. Probably less of an audience, too. Newt gets up and tries to edge around them, but they’re standing kind of weirdly far apart so as not to crush the baby between them, and they’re blocking the whole doorway. He sits back down. 

Eventually they have to stop for breath, and when they do Sharp unstraps the baby and hands her to Hermann, who immediately falls completely silent. She leaves him to stare at the infant and sits down across from Newt. 

Newt glances to the door.

“Oh, don’t look so nervous.” Sharp grins. “It is completely okay that you want to bang my husband. I understand! I want to bang him too.”

“Um,” Newt says.

“My real concerns are more along the lines of whether or not I can watch, and possibly take part once I’ve, you know, recovered from childbirth.” 

“Guh,” Newt says.

“Don’t feel like you have to make any decisions now, or anything. I don’t want you to feel pressured. Just think about it.” Sharp pats his knee lightly and gets up, crossing to where Hermann is still staring silently at the baby. “Right on schedule, huh? Homicidally protective love.”

“Yes,” Hermann says.

Newt stares after the family as they walk—or in Hermann’s case, awkwardly limp—away. Chuck Hansen pauses in the doorway and glowers at him.

“You’re not having a seizure, are you?”

“Herm’s _married_. To _Vanessa Sharp_.”

“Yeah, since like 2020.” Chuck frowns. “I thought you were supposed to be smart?”

Newt just keeps staring at the door, as though Hermann will reappear and explain that it was all an elaborate practical joke. Although now that he thinks of it, not telling him might have been Hermann’s idea of a joke all along. 

“You look like a stunned mullet,” Chuck tells him.

“Thanks,” Newt says weakly. “Thanks for that, Hansen. Really.”

-

_567_

“Charlie boy!”

Chuck pulls up his shoulders and spins on his heel. For a second he’s blinded by the eye-searing pink-orange sundress, and then the tension in his back and neck drops away.

“Hey, Doc.”

Vanessa beams at him. “I came to see my baby!”

Chuck looks pointedly at the sleeping newborn strapped in a carrier on her chest. “It’s not like you have to look far.”

“Huh? Oh, no, _that_ baby I brought with me. I meant Striker.” She kicks half-heartedly at him. “We have to be quick, before someone realises I’m wearing thongs in a construction site. Bloody OH&S.” 

Chuck snorts and points. “She’s seventy-six metres high, you don’t have to look far.”

Vanessa pulls a face. “It’s not the same.” She rolls her shoulders and marches towards Striker’s feet, then stops and pivots back to him. “Before I forget, behold! The future best-pilot-since-Charlie-Hansen!”

Chuck holds out his arms as she carefully unstraps the newborn and passes her over. The baby is tiny, wrapped in an incredibly soft woollen blanket dyed in a completely awful shade of lime green. She stirs as he settles her into his arms and latches one tiny hand around his finger. Chuck grins. 

“What’s her name?”

“Roslin Maria Sharp-Gottlieb.”

“Too small. Throw it back.”

Vanessa slaps her hands to her face and drops her jaw in a parody of a gasp. “Well if you’re going to be like that, you can upgrade your own chest launcher! Give me my spawn.” She reaches out and waggles her fingers imperiously. Chuck obligingly returns the baby.

A passing tech pauses long enough to say, “Ma’am, you really can’t be in here without proper shoes.”

“Curses, foiled again.” Vanessa resettles the baby against her chest. “Well, I guess she’ll still be there tomorrow. Be a dear, Charlie boy, show me where the cafeteria is?”

Chuck opens his mouth to protest, or beg off, or give her directions, then closes it again when he can’t decide which would work. His dad might disown him if he managed to piss off their engineer. Instead he obediently leads her to the elevator. 

His dad nearly walks into them as they step out onto the research floor. Vanessa hops back, arms up to cradle her baby protectively. 

“Jesus, sorry—Sharpie!”

“Herc!”

“Chuck!” Chuck mutters, and sidesteps around the happy reunion. He whistles for Max, who follows him down the corridor while Vanessa lets his dad coo over the baby.

He manages to find a couple of trays of food and a seat at a table with Sasha and Aleksis. 

“You’ve put on muscle,” Aleksis says approvingly. “Now you look like a grown up and not a teenager.”

“And you look more and more like a shaved gorilla every time I see you,” Chuck says. Aleksis laughs and Sasha leans across the table to slap his bicep.

“Be polite, child. You are teaching hand-to-hand with us tomorrow.”

He is too. Chuck sighs.

“Why the long face, ducky?” Vanessa drops into the seat behind him. “And who are your friends?”

“We are not his friends,” Sasha says imperiously. “We are the people who are going to make him into a true soldier.”

“Ah, of course. You must be Sasha then. And that would make you Aleksis.” 

Chuck sighs and drops his head. He picks at his food. They have real fish today, fried in butter, which would normally be something to celebrate, but he’s not feeling it. 

When the Kaidanovskies leave, Vanessa digs her elbow into his ribs. “You know, I didn’t believe your dad when he said you were pining—”

“I’m not _pining,_ ” Chuck says disgustedly.

“You are so pining. You are pining like a forest full of conifers. You are pining so hard it can be seen from space. We could weaponise your pining and use it to vaporise a Category Five kaiju.” Chuck doesn’t reply. Vanessa elbows him again. “C’mon, not even a smile? Is it that Becket boy? He’s _dreamy._ ”

“Oh my god,” Chuck says, and drops his head onto the table. 

“Seriously, he’s hot. You should tap that. It’d be good for you.” 

“Don’t you have a husband to harass?”

“He’s exiled me from the lab. Apparently I’m distracting.”

“Then go build a fucking jaeger or something,” Chuck snaps. 

“Fine, I will.” Vanessa stands up. “Come find me when you’re done sulking.” 

Chuck puts his head back down on the table.

-

_507_

The jaegers are coming along rapidly now; the massive metal skeletons are complete, and wiring is being laid. The technicians work in shifts, so the hangar is always alive with shouts and the ring of metal on metal. 

Mako spreads half a dozen jaeger blueprints out across a LOCCENT console. She comes up here to drown out distractions—always a necessity when trying to decipher Doctor Sharp’s erratic chicken scratch.

Tendo sets a cup of green tea down by her elbow. She thanks him and takes a sip. 

“What brings you up here so late?”

“The peace and quiet.” 

“Was that a hint?” Tendo pouts.

“No.” Mako smiles at him. “Surely you’ve noticed some... tension... among the pilots.”

“You mean Becket and Hansen Junior? Yeah.” Tendo drops into the chair across from her. “I think everyone’s noticed that except them. It’s freakin’ tragic.”

“Even I noticed it,” Mako says. “They can’t keep their hands off each other. Perhaps they think it doesn’t count if they’re sparring.”

“Yeah, because rolling around on the floor, grappling and getting all sweaty, that’s completely platonic.” Tendo snorts and takes a drink from one of his ever-present coffee cups. 

“It can be,” Mako says. “But... not the way they do it.”

“No kidding. Hey, do you have any idea what the hell is going on in the K-Science block?”

Mako frowns. “No. What have you heard?”

“Apparently Gottlieb and Geiszler were getting it on before Sharp arrived.”

“I don’t believe that,” Mako said. “Newton would have been twice as manic if that were true.”

“Maybe, but there’s definitely something. Next time you see them, watch the way they talk to each other. There’s _tension_ for you.” Tendo waggles his fingers. 

Mako smiles and sips her tea. They lapse into a comfortable silence as she pores over the blueprints and Tendo taps at a console.

“I feel like we haven’t talked in ages,” Tendo mutters after a while.

“We haven’t,” Mako says. “Everyone has been so busy.”

Tendo shrugs. “Well, in future, we’ll just have to make time. I miss you, kiddo.” He ruffles her hair briskly before he leaves.

\- 

_474_

“Never have I ever... piloted a jaeger.”

There’s a collective groan from the pilots in the room as they down their shots. Newt whoops triumphantly. 

“Never have I ever drifted with a kaiju,” Hu says pointedly. Newt sighs and takes his shot like a man.

“Never have I ever drifted with only one other person,” says Cheung.

Sasha slams back her shot and fires back with, “Never have I ever drifted with two other people.” Hu slaps his brother upside the head once, then again at Jin’s encouragement.

“Never have I ever killed a kaiju,” Tendo says. Newt reaches across the circle to bro-fist him.

“Never have I ever worn high heels,” Mako offers. Sasha drinks. So does Raleigh.

“What? I had some fun in college. Never have I ever hooked up with a married... person.”

Newt glares at him, but takes a shot. So do Tendo and Jin. Hu points at his brother. 

“What! When did this happen?”

“Shanghai,” Jin says succinctly. “Never have I ever... seen a whale.”

Mako drinks. 

“You lucky brat,” says Chuck. “Never have I ever... spent a night in jail.” Newt, Cheung, Sasha, Tendo, and Raleigh all drink to that.

Chuck’s entire face is numb by the time they call it a night, and he can’t really feel his hands either. He’s kind of glad Sasha cut them off when she did. The triplets just kept getting more and more sexual, and there was only so much Chuck could blush before vodka stopped being an excuse. He leans back against the wall and sighs heavily. The sparring room is so comfortable, especially when they add a whole mess of pillows to the crash mats. 

Raleigh drops down next to him. “You,” he pronounces, “have the most boring sex life. I didn’t see you drink once for the last half.” All the determination in the world doesn’t stop him from slurring the words together.

“I don’t have a sex life,” Chuck says honestly. He’s slurring pretty heavily as well. He kind of wants to get up and move around but he’s not sure he could make his knees cooperate. They’re usually pretty good knees, but not tonight.

Raleigh snorts. “No one here does. ‘Cept Sasha. And Newt, apparently. But I mean before!”

“I don’t... had a sex life,” Chuck amends. He’s pretty sure that’s not right, but it seems to get the point across. 

Raleigh points at him. “You’re a _virgin?_ ”

“Fuck off.” Chuck groans and looks around. They’re the only ones left in the room, which seems important. 

“No, but, you’ve never? Not even, like, fooling around?”

“Time,” Chuck says. That’s not even a full sentence, but Raleigh nods seriously, so he can’t be doing too badly.

Then Raleigh grins, which is just plain terrifying at this point. “Chuck. Chuck. I had the best idea.”

“No,” Chuck says.

“You haven’t even heard it.”

“ _No._ ”

“You should sleep with Mako.”

Chuck tries to articulate _what the fuck is wrong with you,_ but he can’t get his mouth around all the Ws, so he tries something shorter. “ _Hell. No._ ”

“Why not?” Raleigh scowls. “You don’t think she’s good enough for you?”

Chuck groans and covers his eyes with his hands. “I’m like. Ninety per cent sure I’m gay.”

There’s a very long silence. Chuck peeks through his fingers to see if Raleigh’s gotten up and walked away yet. No such luck. Chuck is sure, in a distant sort of way, that he will regret this tomorrow morning.

“How about me, then?”

Chuck uncovers his eyes enough for Raleigh to see them when he rolls them. “You don’t even like me, moron.”

Raleigh pokes him in the chest, hard enough to bruise. “Why would you think I don’t like you?”

“Because,” Chuck says, very patiently, “ _no one_ likes me.”

“That is the stu—stupuh—dumbest thing I’ve ever heard out of you,” Raleigh says. “And that includes every talk show you’ve ever done. Get up.”

“No.”

“Get _up._ ”

Chuck graciously allows Raleigh to haul him to his feet. He leans into Raleigh’s shoulder and sighs. “My head’ll hurt tomorrow.”

Raleigh says, in tones of deadly earnest, “You smell _really good._ ”

-

_473_

Raleigh wakes, much to his own surprise, with a very small hangover. He decides to take this as a victory. Even more to his own surprise is the warm body pressed all along his front. He remembers dragging Chuck back to his room, and later climbing into bed fully clothed. He hadn’t really registered that it had been _Chuck’s_ bed. 

He considers escaping, but his arm is pinned under Chuck’s torso, and their legs are tangled. Judging by Chuck’s slow, deep breathing, it might be a while. Raleigh closes his eyes and lets his mind drift.

He wakes up again some time later when Chuck makes a hoarse, panicky noise and starts flailing. Raleigh leans out of the way of his elbows and mumbles “easy, easy” into the back of his neck. The clock reads 0845.

“Jesus _fuck,_ ” Chuck says.

Raleigh pats his arm in what he hopes is a comforting way. “Go back to sleep.”

“You’re teaching.” Raleigh isn’t sure if he’s meant to respond to this, so he doesn’t. “Raleigh. You’re _teaching_. Foul weather combat. You start at 0900.”

Raleigh has to think about this for a second before it registers, but when it does he bolts out of bed, nearly sending Chuck to the floor in his haste. “Mother _fucker_.”

“Yep.” Chuck sits up too. His hair is all over the place and he can’t seem to open his eyes the whole way. It is ridiculously adorable. Raleigh hesitates, then leans in and kisses Chuck’s cheek.

Chuck’s eyes immediately snap open all the way, but by then Raleigh’s out the door, hollering a goodbye over his shoulder. 

-

_452_

It’s not as hard to find babysitters in the Shatterdome as Hermann had initially feared. The situation is complicated by the way neither he nor Vanessa can stand to be far from Roslin for long, but they do have moments of privacy.

It is irritating that none of the Shatterdome beds are large enough for three, of course, but one does what one can.

“Christ, I needed that.” Vanessa sighs and stretches, rests her head on his shoulder. “You all right there, Newt?”

“Yep!” Newt’s voice is strained. “Jesus, the pair of you. I gotta say, I was not expecting... that.”

“I know, right?” Vanessa cards her fingers through Hermann’s hair. “He looks so... mild.”

“ _He_ is _here,_ ” Hermann says pointedly. Vanessa swoops in and presses a gentle kiss to his mouth.

Newt sits up and shuffles around, evidently seeking something. When he does not find it, he flops across Hermann’s stomach so Vanessa can pet his hair, too. Hermann shoves at him until he removes his shoulder from Hermann’s kidney.

“For real, though, Hermann, I thought you were going to be a total prude.”

“I am extremely well-read,” Hermann says, without as much venom in his voice as he’d like, “and able to communicate my desires without shame or euphemism.”

“And yet you still suck at pillow talk,” Vanessa says. “And flirting. Seriously, Newt, did he tell you how we met?”

“No!” Newt sits up, his knee digging painfully into Hermann’s bad leg. He hisses and flinches away. Newt nearly falls off the bed in his effort to back away. “Sorry sorry sorry—”

Vanessa’s phone rings and she does fall off the bed as she scrambles after it. “Is everything okay? ...yes, yes, of course. Sorry, I must have lost track of time... I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Thank you so much. See you soon.” She hangs up. “I was supposed to pick up Roslin like twenty minutes ago, bee arr bee.”

Hermann shifts over to Vanessa’s side of the bed and watches as she yanks on her shirt and heads for the door. “Trousers, dear.”

Vanessa pauses, says “Fuck,” and puts on her trousers. “Thank you, darling, what would I do without you?”

As soon as the door swings closed behind her Newt jabs Hermann in the shoulder. “How did you meet her? Seriously, Herm, she’s way out of your league.” 

Hermann traces a hand over Newt’s stomach and pinches, hard enough to bruise. “Do not call me _Herm,_ Newton.” Newt makes an extremely gratifying noise. Hermann lets go and watches the blood rush to the skin. “I wrote the Arbiter operating system used in Striker Eureka. We met during construction.”

Newt opens his mouth, most likely in order to ask a whole series of increasingly invasive and embarrassing questions. Hermann elects to delay the conversation by kissing him. 

As much as he enjoys having the simultaneous company of his wife and his lover, the bed is really much more comfortable for two.

-

_421_

Chuck has been given a small, angry baby, and he’s not entirely sure what to do with it.

He tried to give her back to Vanessa, but by the time he even registered what was happening she was storming into the hangar deck, shouting something about piss-poor radiation shielding, and he figured a room with several poorly-shielded nuclear reactors was maybe not the best place for a baby.

He tried to give her to Gottlieb, too, but he wasn’t in the lab. Nor was Geiszler, who probably wouldn’t have been his third or fourth or even tenth choice for babysitting duty, but who could at least have told him where to look.

He ends up in the cafeteria, trying to drink coffee without jostling or disturbing the tiny, fragile creature clinging to his chest. Some of the recruits come over to stare at him.

“What?”

One of them—Lewis, he thinks—says, “That’s, ah... not how you hold a baby, sir.”

“Seriously, sir,” says Te Rangi. “You gotta support her head.” 

Chuck adjusts his grip so the tiny head is cradled in one of his hands. Roslin immediately stops fussing. 

One of the recruits, a man whose name has completely escaped Chuck, says, “Is she yours, sir?” 

Chuck narrowly avoids a spittake. “Jesus, no. I’m just the babysitter.”

The recruits settle themselves around him and start talking among themselves, about the kinds of weapons they want or the names they’d give their jaegers, if Vanessa ever decides they’re worthy of the privilege. Chuck’s glad to know she terrifies them as much as she’d terrified him the first time they’d met. 

Raleigh drops into the seat next to him. Chuck tenses a little, but all Raleigh does is lean over and coo at Roslin. Chuck still can’t really relax. Things have been weird between them for almost two months. They still spar and call each other names, but there’s some kind of new tension, and Chuck doesn’t know how to handle it. Raleigh doesn’t seem to notice, or maybe he just doesn’t care. 

“Can I hold her?”

Chuck is happy to hand Roslin over. Raleigh cradles her against his chest. He’s wearing an incredibly lumpy knitted jumper. Chuck’s torn between making a crack about how hideous it is and asking where Raleigh got it; it looks ridiculously warm and soft.

Chuck enjoys having the full use of his arms and drinks his coffee in silence, while Raleigh tickles Roslin’s stomach with a fingertip. Roslin shrieks, but it sounds like a happy noise, even if it does rupture Chuck’s eardrums a little. 

Eventually the recruits wander off, and Raleigh says, “Have you been avoiding me?”

Chuck stifles a spittake for the second time in under an hour. “We spar every day, Riley.”

Raleigh kicks him under the table. “Yeah, but you got all weird about it.”

Chuck glares. Raleigh glares back.

Raleigh breaks eye contact first and looks down at Roslin. “Is this because I kissed you?”

Chuck wants to bluster something about Raleigh’s kissing technique, but he’s pretty sure Raleigh remembers what they were talking about that night. He may pilot a jaeger against apocalyptic mountains of bone and muscle that can shred titanium like tissue paper, but his self-preservation instincts aren’t completely dead yet. 

He aims for honesty. “More because you offered to sleep with me. And then climbed into my bed.”

Raleigh flushes. “I kept my clothes on!”

“I chose a bad time to walk in,” says Vanessa. Raleigh twitches violently. Chuck just rolls his eyes. He’s used to Vanessa’s creepy silent stalker shtick. “Give me my spawn, Roslin shouldn’t be hearing this.”

“She hears worse from _you_ ,” Chuck says.

“Wash your mouth, she does not.” Vanessa cuddles Roslin close to her chest. “She only hears sweetness and light from her mother, don’t you sweetie?”

Raleigh mutters something that sounds like, “Bullshit.” 

Vanessa flicks his ear and walks away, leaving Chuck and Raleigh alone with each other.

“Wanna spar?” Chuck offers.

Raleigh sags. “God, yes.”

-

_405_

“No, but, _liquid fucking nitrogen_. And a hammer!” Vanessa waves the nail file in the air, as if to demonstrate her point. “Freeze it, smash it, no more bloody kaiju. Like Horizon Brave!”

“With better armour, I hope,” says Sasha. She wiggles her toes. “I think pink for me.”

“Pink for everything,” Vanessa agrees. “Except Mako. Mako, I have blue that matches your hair!”

“That will be perfect,” Mako says agreeably. “Does your nitrogen jaeger have a name?”

“Not yet.” Vanessa captures one of Mako’s hands and starts filing the ragged edges of her nails. “I have to ask the pilots. But we’ve got some good ones.”

“I like Suffer Jet,” Sasha says. She takes Mako’s other hand and smears something oily over her cuticles. “There aren’t enough jaegers with puns in their names”

“I think Barrier Reaver’s my favourite.” Vanessa holds Mako’s hand up to the light, examining her work. “What about you, Mako?”

“Whistler Valkyrie.” 

“That is a good one. No pun, though.” 

Mako admires her fingers when the other women finally release her. Her cuticles have been pushes back and trimmed and the nails are in short, smooth curves, instead of ragged chewed-on edges.

Vanessa is painting her toes, brow furrowed with the same fierce concentration she wears when she’s working on her blue prints. Sasha waves the blue polish at Mako, who offers up her fingers.

“Did you name Cherno Alpha?”

“No.” Sasha shrugs. “The Corps decided the name. I would not have chosen Alpha.”

“Tell me your dream jaeger, baby.” Vanessa looks up, smirking. “I’ll build her for you.”

“Cherno is perfect,” Sasha says. “I just wish she had a better name.”

“I am the same with Gipsy,” Mako says. “She is a joy to pilot, but honestly, why was she named that?”

“Named after an oldschool de Havilland engine from World War Two, but that doesn’t make it any less racist.” Vanessa wiggles her toes. “Give me your feet, Sasha. Candy pink or neon pink or pastel pink?”

“Neon.” Sasha shifts to put her feet in Vanessa’s lap. “What is your dream jaeger?”

“I could never pilot, but if I could, I would want a jaeger with a super manly name, like Warhammer Bloodrage, or Bone Crusher, or something, and then I’d paint it pink and cover it in loveheart and flower decals.” 

“You could do that anyway,” Mako says. “Choose one of the new builds. Are there any with manly names?”

“Manliest so far is probably Grim Tyrant.” Vanessa cackles like a hyena. “Let me see what I can do.”

It’s nice to spend some time together, to gossip and paint each other’s nails and help Sasha bleach her hair. Mako teams up with Sasha to tease Vanessa about her boys, and Vanessa threatens them with sub-par jaeger upgrades, and at some point Sasha produces a bottle of vodka and things go rapidly downhill.

“Do you think it will be enough?” Mako asks when they’ve all managed to stop giggling, her head resting on Sasha’s thigh. Sasha’s fingernails scratch lightly at her scalp.

“The Mark-1 jaegers were made in fourteen months flat,” Sasha says. “We’ve still got more than a year. We will do this.”

Vanessa’s voice is muffled, because her face is on Mako’s stomach, but Mako can still clearly make out the words, “Fuck yeah.”

-

_365_

With one year to go, the thirty new jaegers are ready for testing. Most are more or less naked metal skeletons wreathed in wire, but they have power and weapons systems and the Conn-Pods are intact. The recruits finally graduate to being pilots, and get to take the monsters on a walk around the hangar, one at a time.

Raleigh watches from LOCCENT as Duncan(CS)Bentley take their first steps in Whisky Runner. Tendo walks them through some simple drills. Vanessa paces and takes notes on a tablet, muttering about armour ratings under her breath, only pausing to snipe at her underlings about the budget. Her hair's down, a thick mane falling around her shoulders; Raleigh's not sure if the streaks of gold running through the black are from the sun or from peroxide, but either way she has the look of an extremely well-dressed lion.

Someone clears their throat behind him. Raleigh glances over his shoulder.

“Hey, Herc.”

“Raleigh.” Herc glances around at the LOCCENT staff. “Mind if I have a word?”

“Sure.” 

Raleigh follows Herc out of the control room. Behind him he hears Vanessa erupt. 

“ _I will get this done if I have to bankrupt Australia!_ ”

Herc leads him into an empty office and shuts the door behind them. Raleigh tenses a little.

“Look, Raleigh...” Herc sighs and scrubs his hands through his hair. “I know you and my son have... feelings.”

Raleigh feels every muscle in his body lock. 

_Oh no._

“Chuck’s not a bad kid, but he doesn’t have a lot of experience...”

Raleigh listens, and nods seriously, and tries to say reassuring things in the right places, but his mind is gone, spinning out into the void. 

“And,” Herc finishes, on a note of steely determination, “if you break his heart, I will break your legs.”

“Yessir,” Raleigh says weakly. Herc nods sharply and leaves him alone in the room.

Raleigh waits a few minutes, until he’s sure Herc has disappeared, and staggers into the hallway. Mako almost runs into him.

“You look awful.” She frowns up at him. “What happened?”

“Herc just threatened me.”

“Oh, about Chuck? I only wonder it didn’t happen sooner. Was it so terrible?”

Raleigh stares at her. “Mako,” he says, very slowly, “I’m not sleeping with Chuck.”

“Oh.” Her frown deepens at that. “Why not?”

Raleigh opens his mouth to answer her, realises he doesn’t actually have anything to say to that, and closes it. 

“He’s in his room, if you wanted to speak to him about it,” Mako says helpfully.

“Thanks,” Raleigh says. He comes to a decision, and executes it.

Chuck is shirtless and a little sweaty, flushed, like he’s been working out. He probably has. Raleigh plants the flat of his hand on Chuck’s chest and pushes him hard enough that he stumbles back into his room. 

“What the fuck, Raleigh?” 

“I just had a really interesting conversation with your dad,” Raleigh says. His voice sounds very calm, all things considered.

“Oh, god.” Chuck rubs his face. “I’m—”

“Shh.” Raleigh pushes Chuck again, gently, until the backs of Chuck’s knees are up against the edge of his bed. “Here’s the thing, Hansen. If I’m going to get threatened by your dad _anyway_ , I want to have done something to deserve it.”

Chuck’s eyes are very wide, and his mouth is open but no noises are coming out. Raleigh leans forward to kiss him.

It becomes very quickly apparently that Chuck has no idea how kissing works. Raleigh draws back every time Chuck tries to get the upper hand, until he finally groans and stills.

Raleigh pulls away. “Want to back out?”

Chuck grabs his wrist, pivots, and tosses Raleigh neatly onto the bed. Chuck’s on him just a second later. Raleigh runs his hands over Chuck’s torso. He’s ridiculously toned. 

“You like what you see, old timer?” 

Chuck is grinning, which is honestly just insufferable, so Raleigh leans up to kiss him some more. Chuck bites down on his lip and Raleigh hisses and flinches.

“Okay, none of this alpha male bullshit. If you really want bruises, I can give you some later.”

Chuck’s cocky grin fades down to an actual, genuine smile. Raleigh touches one of his dimples and drags him in for another kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaeger Pilot short hand: PC (parent-child), NR (no relation), SI (siblings), CS (cousins), SP (spouses).


	2. Chapter 2

_363_

“You don’t speak German.”

“Nope.”

“No German at all.”

“I’ve picked up ‘bitte’, ‘danke schön’, and ‘verpissen’.”

Newt stares. “How the hell do you deal with Hermann?”

Vanessa grins. “I’m pretty sure you’ve already seen—”

“No, no innuendo, this is a serious conversation! English isn’t nearly angry enough to handle Hermann on a tear.”

“It works for us. You may have noticed—ow, Rosie, no!” 

Vanessa gently pries her daughter’s fingers from her earring. Roslin shrieks and waves her hands, opening and closing her fists. Newt’s getting used to the routine by now; he lifts Roslin long enough for Vanessa to get her shirt and bra out of the way, then hands her back. Vanessa settles Roslin against her chest and presses a kiss to her forehead as she starts to feed. 

Newt’s eyes are drawn to the tip of the scar that starts between her breasts and spreads over her stomach, bright pink against Vanessa’s dark skin. He’s pretty sure it’s a burn or scald, and he has an extremely vivid image of Hermann tracing it with his tongue while they were in bed last night.

Vanessa leans back in her chair. “Fuck, I’ve lost my train of thought.” 

“Me too. Uh, language or something?”

“Oh, yeah. I have English, that’s really all. I tried to pick up Arrernte in my twenties, but it didn’t take.”

Newt leans forward, fascinated. “Arrernte? Is that, like, your tribe’s language?” Vanessa’s smile doesn’t vanish, exactly, but it does harden around the edges. Newt flinches. “Uh, I mean, I—”

“It’s cool, it’s not the first time I’ve been asked that.” Vanessa sighs. “Short answer, both my parents were stolen children, and the records are mostly lost or incomplete, so there’s no way to know who our people are. It’s a sore spot.” 

Newt bites down on the string of questions threatening to break loose. It’s not showing on her face, but he’s pretty sure he’s just really upset his… girlfriend? boyfriend’s girlfriend? He’s not sure how to classify Vanessa. There really isn’t a word in English or German for what she means to him. Maybe if he looks into French, or Italian. Belatedly, he gets out a sentence in English.

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know. Hermann put his foot in it too, back in the day. Do they even mention the stolen children outside of Australia?” Newt shakes his head and resolves to Google it later. Vanessa presses her toes against his shin. “Oh hey, I wanted to ask about the possibility of kaiju pulling EMP-type shenanigans...”

Newt’s pretty sure this is Vanessa’s version of taking pity on him. 

It doesn’t feel like they’re talking for a long time—Newt expounds on electrocytes and the organs of an electric eel, and Vanessa voices the most bizarre theory about the Ovshinsky effect, and Newt has to tweet that one for posterity because it’s either genius or _hilarious_ and he doesn’t know enough about semiconductors to know which—but then Hermann limps in, which means they must have been talking for at least a couple of hours. Or that Hermann got bored of being alone with his equations, but the chalk dust over his sleeves says that isn’t true. 

Newt gets a brief, intense kiss that nearly makes him fall out of his chair as Hermann passes. By the time he’s got himself upright again Hermann and Vanessa are leaning against each other. Roslin babbles happily and crawls into her father’s lap. 

“You guys are just the cutest family.” Newt leans his chin on his hands and stares at them. 

Vanessa looks at him, and digs her elbow into Hermann’s ribs. Hermann looks up from Roslin and glares at her. Vanessa makes a complicated series of expressions—Newt’s starting to figure out her weird non-verbal communiques, but she and Hermann have been together for over seven years, so he’s got a lot of catching up to do.

Hermann sighs. “Newton, we’ve been together for almost as long as my daughter has been alive. I do believe you can consider yourself _part_ of the family.”

“Technically that’s only seven and a half months,” Vanessa says. “So, no pressure or anything.”

Newt tries very hard not to stare at them, and ends up blurting out, “So hey, is it just me, or are Roslin’s eyes getting darker?”

-

_341_

Mako is almost flattened when Hu and Jin come flying out of the kwoon.

“I did not need to know that about you!” Jin howls through the door. Someone on the other side laughs and slams it closed. 

Mako looks at their faces—Jin horrified, Hu on the edge of laughter—and says, “Ah. Chuck and Raleigh?”

Hu dissolves into giggles. Jin punches him in the arm. 

“They’re _sullying_ the kwoon.”

“I see.” Mako shrugs. “Well, since they have clearly disrupted all our plans, perhaps we could do something else?”

Hu is still laughing, wiping at his eyes. Jin rolls his eyes and pulls out his phone.

By the time they get to the hangar deck, they’ve recruited enough for two teams of five, and Aleksis has arranged for hoops to be attached to the feet of Nomad Glacier and Stellar Bound. As Mako watches, London Pride and Intrepid Electra are hauled over to mark out the other edges of the court. Aside from Aleksis and Sasha, all of the participants are new pilots; the Yunupingu twins from Djäpana Wrath, Allen from Whistler Valkyrie, and Te Rangi and Apirana from Tauranga Nu. 

“It hardly seems fair to play the new pilots against the experienced,” says Allen. 

“And it’s hardly fair to have Jin and Hu on the same team,” says Sasha. “We cannot fairly split by gender, or place of origin.”

“We could split by tattoos,” Te Rangi says. 

That is how they play, in the end; Mako lifts her shirt to show the date of Onibaba’s attack on her ribs, and is immediately shepherded over to Te Rangi, Sasha, one of the Yunupingus—Mako thinks this one is Jess—and Jin. Hu produces a basketball, and they play.

The teams are more or less evenly matched, with the exception of Aleksis’ height. Jin and Hu are by far the best players on the field. They don’t pay attention to many of the rules, especially since half the players don’t really know them. It’s a bit of a mess, but it’s certainly very cathartic.

They gather an audience over time, mostly other pilots and maybe ten or twelve of the engineering staff. When they finally stop playing, having lost track of the score, another ten players emerge and borrow the ball. Mako climbs onto Stellar’s foot and watches. 

Raleigh climbs up beside her and clears his throat. 

“I’m happy for you,” Mako says. “But if your new relationship leads you to this kind of inconsiderate behaviour, I will put worms in your bed and change all your playlists to Cher’s greatest hits.”

“Fair enough.”

Mako sweeps a lock of sweaty hair out of her face. Her blue streaks have started to fade; she will have to arrange another girl’s night in, and beg Sasha to help her with them. She’s not entirely sure what Sasha did to her hair to make the blue so bright and so long-lasting, and Sasha won’t tell her, claiming it’s a Russian state secret.

Max runs up to her feet, barking. Chuck, following, scoops him up and sets her on her lap. Mako lets Max lick her face and scratches his ears. 

“He has better manners than his owner.”

Chuck shrugs and climbs up to sit on her other side. “You know, Mako, every pilot’s getting some except you. Maybe it’d help you unwind.” Mako smiles knowingly. Chuck twitches. “No way, who—”

“She’s messing with you,” Raleigh says from the other side. 

“I have no interest in ‘getting some’,” Mako says. “I’m sure I’ve told you this before. Also, you missed Roslin’s first words.”

Chuck frowns. “Are you still messing with me?”

“Hermann took her to LOCCENT this morning, and she said, ‘hello, jaegers’. If you had been there for the scheduled briefing, you would not have missed it. It was _adorable._ ”

“God damn.” Raleigh grins. “Well, judging by the way Vanessa talks, her third word’s probably going to be ‘fuck’.”

-

_305_

Stacker gets word at noon, collects Herc, and goes straight to the labs.

It’s so silent as he approaches that he initially thinks his scientists must be elsewhere. When he opens the door, Hermann is at his blackboard and Newt is working quietly at a computer. Neither are speaking. He realises why after a few seconds—Vanessa is in the back of the room, working on a tablet, with Roslin asleep in her lap.

Herc mutters, “I think I just stepped into the Twilight Zone.” 

All three look up sharply.

“Do not wake her,” Hermann says in a low, urgent whisper.

“Yeah dude,” Newt says. “if you wake her, she’ll cry, and then we’ll cry, and then Vanessa will lactate, it’ll be a nightmare.”

“Gee, thanks, Newt,” Vanessa says, speaking at a more normal volume. “Come on in, pull up a chair. She’ll be fine if we’re just talking. Quietly. Without bickering.”

This last, Stacker is certain, is directed at Hermann and Newt; it has the ring of a conversation repeated so often as to become rote. Both men turn back to their work in pointed silence. 

“This concerns all three of you,” Stacker says. 

Herc digs out a couple of chairs, setting them close to Vanessa. Hermann and Newt sit on either side of her, like guards of honour. Hermann rests his hand on Vanessa’s shoulder.

“I’ve been informed that, now that the jaegers are essentially operational, our funding is going to be cut. They want me to begin dismantling K-Science, starting two weeks from today. In particular, they want me to remove the three of you, and leave the rest of the work to be finished by your staff.”

“What the fuck!” Newt snaps, bounding to his feet and sending a stack of empty Petri dishes flying. They crash to the floor, and Roslin wakes and starts to cry. 

Vanessa sighs deeply, stands, and says, “Excuse me,” very calmly. Stacker nods, and she takes Roslin outside. 

Hermann doesn’t really pace, but he gives the impression of a man who very much wants to. “Who is behind this nonsensical decision?”

“It’s an election year in Australia,” Herc says.

“Ah.”

“This is such fucking bullshit!” Newt is doing enough pacing for both of them. Stacker waits him out. “This is—this is—what the fuck are they even thinking! We’re saving the fucking _world!_ ”

“They want to get rid of most of our intelligence team as well,” Herc says. “Anyone we can’t prove we need.” 

“Motherfuckers!” Newt drags his hands through his hair. “Who the fuck thinks this is a good idea?!”

Hermann gets to his feet with a wince. “I can provide a statistical analysis of the value of our work, cost-benefits, alternative applications of our findings—”

“We will use that,” Stacker says. “And we will fight this every step of the way.”

“We’re going to need your least favourite people,” Herc says.

Hermann blanches.

Newt turns to them, looks at Stacker, looks at Herc, and hisses, “No. Not _PR._ ”

-

_299_

Chuck shifts uncomfortably. “Look, I get that this is necessary. I get that we have to put it out there. But did it have to be the guys who ran that fucking countdown?”

Sasha snorts. “Your life is _so hard_.”

“They _counted down_ until I was legal. It was disgusting.”

Sasha shrugs. “One website once ranked female pilots by their… what’s the word they used? Fuckable, something like that? Another by their breast size. The only reason we had no countdowns is because we didn’t have parents to get us in before we were adults.”

Chuck frowns and opens his mouth. A little hand immediately slaps across it.

“No, Chuck. We are working on your restraint, remember?” Mako releases him. “And I promise you, the jail-bait countdown was not nearly as disturbing as the website dedicated to the Gustin sisters and their fictional incestuous relationship.”

“Although,” Sasha says contemplatively, “now that I think of it, there was one like that for you and your father.”

Chuck stares at her, too horrified to even speak. 

Aleksis chooses that moment to arrive, greeting Sasha with a kiss and Chuck with a noogie. “We are all looking very professional. No one will believe this.”

“Except maybe from Mako,” Sasha says. “They won’t know any better.”

Mako huffs. Raleigh appears, throwing his arms over her shoulders and wrapping her in a hug from behind. Chuck takes a second to appreciate how damn good Raleigh looks in the simple dark blue suits the pilots are wearing, since they can’t get uniforms for all the newbies. He takes another second after that to feel really damn smug. 

Raleigh does a head count. “Where’re the triplets?”

“Herc went to round them up,” Sasha says. “Give it another five minutes, then we can hunt them down.”

“Too late,” says Aleksis. 

Chuck turns. His dad has indeed rounded up the Wei triplets, as well as Newt, Hermann, Vanessa, Tendo, Glenn from PR, and a trio of Chinese women, each carrying what looks like a square black suitcase made of hard shiny plastic. Aleksis, and the way he tries to slowly back away, is what clues Chuck in.

“Make-up artists,” Raleigh sighs. “Oh hell.”

In the end it’s only the fact that Mako has Raleigh trapped that keeps Chuck there while a woman smears what feels like four litres of make-up onto his face. That, and the way his dad is perfectly stoic through the whole process.

Glenn from PR flits around like a hummingbird on steroids, reminding people of their lines and their goals. Vanessa comes over and leans on his shoulder.

Chuck says, “This fucking sucks.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Vanessa sighs. “They won’t let me keep Roslin, not even while we’re doing all this hurry up and wait crap.” 

Glenn’s bullied the entire science and technical teams into charcoal grey pant suits over white button-down shirts. It doesn’t look right. The only concessions to Vanessa’s normal bright colours are in her jewellery, all bright pink and gold. Newt’s wearing a skinny tie in bright red, and Tendo has a polka-dotted bow-tie, which seems to have sent Glenn into a conniption fit. Hermann, of course, is all in grey, without a hair out of place. 

“He’s taking this unified front thing a little far.”

Vanessa shrugs. “I was considering industrial action, you know, having the entire support staff walk out—”

“Jesus, Doc!” Chuck glares at her. “How are we supposed to do our jobs if your lot don’t—”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Vanessa snaps back. “I know that! I thought it might push them, but they’d probably just slam us for trying to hold the world hostage or some bullshit, so _I didn’t go ahead with it._ For fuck’s sake, Charlie!”

Hermann looks up when Vanessa raises her voice and limps over. At the click of his cane Vanessa turns and leans into him, carefully turning her newly made-up face away from his clothes. Hermann’s saying something Chuck’s pretty sure he’s not meant to hear.

He turns to Raleigh, who may be a complacent jackass, but who probably won’t be freaking out.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Raleigh leans in to steal a kiss. “I’m thinking about a pre-emptive strike. You know, call up your PM, tell her ‘A journalist walks into a Shatterdome’ and let her finish…”

Chuck snorts. “She’d probably—”

“They’re here! Places!” Glenn shouts. Chuck rolls his eyes and gets in line, wedged between his father and Sasha. 

Pentecost appears, leading a reporter, two cameramen, and a whole host of people armed with lights and microphones. Chuck puts on his most photogenic smile and rolls his shoulders a little. 

“Do not fuck this up,” his dad mutters, loud enough for everyone in the line to hear.

-

_280_

Mako is getting very, very sick of journalists. 

The Marshall has promised her that this—a tall blonde woman named D’Anna Biers—is the last one, although she will apparently be staying for some time. Mako has been informed by some of the Australian pilots that the habit of entering apostrophes into names in lieu of vowels is common among a cultural group known as ‘bogans’.

D’Anna and her camera crew have, at least, been vastly more polite than many of the other reporters Mako has escorted.

“I have to say, Miss Mori, I’m a little surprised at how much access I’m being given.”

“We are no longer a military organisation, Ms Biers.” Mako hits the button on the elevator that will take them to LOCCENT. “We are now receiving funding via a number of civil governments. As a result, much of what you will see is technically a matter of public record.” They step into the elevator. “Of course, we will need to ensure that no sensitive material is broadcast.”

“Of course,” says D’Anna agreeably. Mako is instantly suspicious. 

The elevator doors open onto LOCCENT in full swing. Half a dozen staff are devoted to running diagnostics of the new jaegers, trying to troubleshoot before the test runs begin so problems will not be discovered in the painful way. Two are monitoring the Breach. Mako leads D’Anna to the front, where Herc and the Marshall are watching a test run.

“Which jaeger is that?” D’Anna asks.

“Intrepid Electra,” the Marshall says, turning to face them. “One of the new Sharp designs.” He offers D’Anna his hand. “Marshall Stacker Pentecost. This is Hercules Hansen.”

D’Anna shakes his hand. Mako slides away from them to talk to Tendo.

“How have we been doing?”

“Couple of issues with Keeper Ruby and Flying Nimbus,” Tendo says. “Vanessa’s down there now, taking a look. Grim, Whisky, Nomad, London, and Suffer are cleared, they’re sealing the first layer of armour tonight.”

Mako frowns. Vanessa, with only a few days left in their company, has taken to leaving her crew to handle anything short of a disaster. “Who’s up next?”

“Emerald Lady.”

Mako pulls up the schedule. Emerald’s pilots, Azinger(SI)Parham, are listed as having excellent simulator scores, with twenty kills for twenty drops; Emerald, however, has had a litany of problems, from warped shielding to electrical faults. That explains Vanessa’s presence in the hangar; everyone will know exactly where she is and how to contact her if something important should fail. 

Mako turns around and nearly smacks into one of D’Anna’s cameras. “Excuse me,” she says stiffly, and strides out of LOCCENT. 

The cameraman follows her.

Mako pointedly ignores him as she crosses the hangar, carefully staying well out of Intrepid’s path as Tendo’s voice sounds over the speakers, declaring the test ended and ordering Intrepid to return to her bay. Raleigh and Cheung have started a card game atop one of Cherno Alpha’s feet. Mako considers the bulk of a camera and the relative fitness of a cameraman, and joins them, hauling herself up over struts of metal.

“Hey, Mako.” Raleigh grins at her. When she gets close enough he pulls her down into a bear hug. “Couple of the kids’re nervous about their tests.”

Cheung ruffles her hair. “I was just saying, no matter how bad they screw it up, they can’t be as bad as your first time out.”

Mako feels her face heat up, very slightly. “Ah, yes. Of course, you have all had dry runs in unfinished jaegers without incident. It is unlikely that anyone else will come close to destroying LOCCENT.”

Of course this piques the curiosity of the junior pilots, and of course Mako and Raleigh are made to recount the entire story, glossing over the specifics of the memories. Mako is very conscious of the damnable cameraman peering up at them as they talk, recording every word. Raleigh squeezes her hand, and some of the tension in her shoulders drops away.

They fall quiet as Emerald steps out of her bay.

Tendo’s voice is the kind of level calm he only gets in the most dire situations. Some of the tech team set up holographic targets at the far end of the hangar. Emerald squares her stance, aims, fires, and scores a perfect hit. She walks backwards a few steps, fires; another hit.

Tendo is still talking, walking Emerald through the test, but he’s relaxed now, joking with the pilots. A weapon backfire is much more dangerous than any of the other things that could happen. Emerald runs forward, footsteps shaking the entire Shatterdome; she lifts first one shipping container, then two, then four. She tries out her blades against more holographic targets, crouches, turns, kicks at the air. The test concludes without incident, and Emerald is returned to her bay.

Mako relaxes, and she and Raleigh encourage the other pilots to start a new hand. The Nasralleh triplets get up and leave, to prepare for their test, but the rest are happy to play.

They are all taken by surprise when Nocturne Omega’s shoulder-mounted rail gun misfires, spraying the hangar with hot shrapnel.

Fortunately, the Shatterdome hangar is large, and no one has been foolish enough to stay within the blast radius of a jaeger being tested, but a large chunk of Nocturne’s head is missing, and the shoulder is a melting, twisted ruin. Mako rises into a crouch, ready to run forward or back as needed. Nocturne’s pilots get the jaeger to her knees and brace her with the undamaged arm.

Tendo gives the all clear, and the fire team moves in at a brisk walk. Mako can see Vanessa jumping off of Keeper Ruby’s shoulder, trusting in her harness to catch her, abseiling down the jaeger’s chest. The support staff have moved in, some driving cranes over to support the Conn-Pod, others sweeping the hangar to collect the fragments of the gun. Mako goes to join them, and Raleigh follows her. 

Armed with the knowledge that the kaiju target pilots and power sources, Vanessa had been changing up the anatomy of some jaegers; it seems that Nocturne was one such experiment, because the support crew removes the Conn-Pod from the jaeger’s waist. The pilots stumble out as soon as the hatch is opened. Mako strains to remember their names—she’s fairly sure the woman is Hana al-Saqqaf, but she has nothing for the man. 

“Oh no!” al-Saqqaf staggers towards Nocturne, eyes wide. “No, I’m sorry, baby! Come back!”

Vanessa has already started the climb towards Nocturne’s shoulder, along with half a dozen engineers. Mako can hear her cursing all the way. Mako grabs al-Saqqaf by the shoulder and lets go when she flinches.

“Are you injured?” 

“I don’t know… poor Nocturne…”

Mako steers al-Saqqaf away from the jaeger and has her sit down near the Conn-Pod. One of the techs presses a first aid kit into her hands. “Are you burned? Is anything broken?” al-Saqqaf doesn’t take her eyes off Nocturne, and Mako snaps her fingers in front of her face. “Focus, pilot!”

“Ah… I think I’m okay. My shoulder hurts?”

Further examination reveals that the shoulder is dislocated. Her co-pilot sits down beside her as Mako straps al-Saqqaf’s arm to her side to keep her from moving it. 

“I’m sorry, pilot, I have forgotten your name.” Mako turns to him. “Are you injured?”

“It’s Sagami, ma’am. I’m a little singed, nothing too bad.”

“Your nose is bleeding.”

“Huh.” 

Sagami pulls off his helmet. Mako has  him track her finger with his eyes. He is a little dazed, and his pupils aren’t reacting to light as well as they should; she makes a note to have him checked for head injuries. 

“Okay, bud.” Raleigh helps Sagami to his feet. “Let’s get you to medical.”

Mako guides al-Saqqaf to her feet, supporting her by the uninjured shoulder. The cameraman is still filming. Mako bites down on cruel words and focuses on guiding the pilots to medical. 

-

_236_

“Sign these.” Tendo shoves a pair of large, flat rectangles his way. 

Chuck blinks down at them. “What?”

“It’s Roslin’s birthday tomorrow. One for her, one for Vanessa. Sign.”

Chuck digs through his pockets for a pen. “How are you even gonna get these to them?”

“Hermann’s flying out tonight. Getting some family time.” Tendo grinned. “As soon as he gets back, I’m gone, so try not to fuck up too badly in the next fortnight.”

Chuck frowns and turns his attention back to the rectangles. They’re both basically large pieces of cardboard folded in half with a drawing on the front. Roslin’s card has a series of cartoon jaegers brawling with kaiju, and has “Have a MONSTROUSLY good birthday!” written across the bottom in bubble letters. Chuck’s pretty sure Newt’s responsible for that. He opens that card first, scribbles something about how Roslin is going to grow up to be a badass, it’s inevitable, because she’s being raised and has been babysat by some of the greatest heroes of all time, and sketches Striker’s logo underneath his signature. 

Vanessa’s has a meticulously rendered jaeger blueprint on the front, except the labels for things like power sources and weapons have been replaced with things like ‘total badass’ and ‘purified awesome’. This one is almost definitely Tendo’s handiwork. Chuck scribbles an embarrassingly heartfelt message about how much Striker misses her mum in that one and hands both cards back to Tendo. 

“No, what are you giving those to me for? Take it to your dad, get him to pass it on. Get them back to me at four.”

Chuck sighs and rolls his eyes and takes the cards to his dad. 

He finds him sitting in the cafeteria with a couple of the new pilots, going over their training schedules. Chuck waits for the new kids to clear out before he passes over the cards and the pen.

“For Roslin, right?” His dad flips each card open and scribbles inside them. “When does Tendo need ‘em back?”

“Four.”

“I’ll take ‘em round, then.” 

Chuck is about to get up when his dad makes an uncomfortable coughing noise. He sits back down slowly. “Something you need, old man?”

“Yeah, I guess.” His dad stares at the table for a minute. “Look, I know I haven’t always been the best father.”

They’ve had conversations along these lines before, but mostly in the drift, where Chuck can’t actually suppress his immediate thought of _too fucking right you haven’t._ He considers spitting it out now, for the sake of tradition, but his dad’s already talking again. 

“I’m proud of you, kid.  Twenty-two years old and you’re already one of the best pilots around. But I know that’s been… at the expense of other things.”

“Dad,” Chuck says, “this isn’t—”

“Shut it, I’m not done.”

Chuck mimes zipping his lips, and his dad sighs. Not a fan of sarcasm, is his dad. 

“I know this last year’s been a bit of a vacation for you. You’ve never had that before. You’ve had a chance to relax, try some new things… socialise…”

“Oh my God, Dad,” Chuck mutters. His dad talks over the top of him. 

“Raleigh’s a good kid, but he’s been through some shit. Losing his brother the way he did… that’d mess anyone up. And on top of that he was always a stubborn little bastard, even before Yancy died. He’s not what I would choose for your first relationship.”

“I really don’t think this is any of your business, old man.” Chuck stands up. “It’s great that you’ve figured out how to do the whole fatherly concern bit, but it’s a bit late in the day.”

“Chuck,” his dad says, “I want what’s best for you. I want you to be happy.”

“Yeah, and when have you ever managed to pull that off?” Chuck stalks out of the cafeteria, shouldering a technician out of his way as he goes. 

\- 

_149_

There’s a lot of tension in the K-Science block. Of course, as the numbers on the war clock creep down and D’Anna’s camera crew _still aren’t leaving_ , there’s a lot of tension in every other block too, but K-Science is particularly bad.

Raleigh’s learned to ignore the cameras, but it’s not easy to do that when he’s crammed into a line of pilots, watching Hermann and Newt tossing barbs at each other like it’s going out of style.

The room is still perfectly divided down the middle, Newt’s jury-rigged Pons and collection of kaiju parts on one side, Hermann’s computerised models and blackboards on the other, but the back wall seems to have been taken over by Vanessa; there are long sheets of butcher’s paper covering the walls, with jaeger designs scribbled on in what Raleigh’s pretty sure is crayon. Scattered among them are printouts of digital photos—Vanessa and a grey-haired Aboriginal couple Raleigh assumes were her parents, Vanessa and Hermann’s wedding, Vanessa and Hermann with the baby, Newt and Hermann in mid fight, and a whole mess of pictures of the J-Tech staff, the pilots, the jaegers in construction. Raleigh can see him and Mako lecturing the new pilots, him and Chuck sparring. He hadn’t even noticed Vanessa holding the camera. 

He drags his attention back to the present at Herc’s bark. “On point, gents!”

Hermann raps the tip of his cane against his blackboard. “The field used to seal the Breach has been disrupted.”

That gets pretty much everyone’s attention. 

Hermann talks very quickly, jargon flying thick and fast. Raleigh can barely understand him, less so when Newt butts in and then gets into an argument with Pentecost. Hermann interrupts them.

“We can re-stabilise it but it may take as long as a week, even with the full cooperation of the military. We can expect an incursion within four days, and it will most likely be a double event. There may be a second incursion three days later.”

“Is there a chance of it being larger than a double event?”

“Not for the first incursion.”

“Very well. This is quite an opportunity. You’ll be drifting again, gentlemen.” Pentecost turns to the gathered senior pilots. “You have two days to decide which jaegers you intend to take to the drop.”

“How many jaegers, sir?” Cheung asks.

Pentecost pauses for a moment. “We want to blood as many of the recruits we can, and whatever we face is likely to be Category Four or above. Each of you will choose the two most promising teams. If they perform well, they will become your 2ICs for future missions.”

Raleigh glances at Mako. He has some ideas—Ophelia Burn and Bombshell Lancer are definitely the best in terms of simulator scores to date—but Mako is better at figuring out patterns, who’ll compliment them in combat, who’ll be able to lead and follow orders and make the kind of shitty calls that inevitably come with command. 

They’re dismissed and immediately break into conversation among themselves.

“Delta Zero and Banshee Meteor,” Sasha says. “No contest.”

“What about Copper Knight?” says Aleksis. “They have far better control—” They turn a corner and fade out of Raleigh’s hearing.

The triplets are talking among themselves in Chinese, so fast that Raleigh only picks out one word in three; he definitely hears Dragon Stampede’s name, though, and there appears to be a fairly vicious three way argument attempting to choose between Lunatic Stirling, Mirror Edge, or Titan Vanguard. 

Mako grips his wrist and steers him away. “Leave them to their own decisions. Who do you think?”

“You’ll know better than me” Raleigh says honestly. “Ophelia and Bombshell have the best scores, though.”

“Bombshell, yes. Ophelia, no. Dawn or Hera would work better in a team. Dawn in particular is most effective when utilised in a group attack.”

“That settles it, then,” Raleigh says. “Bombshell Lancer and Dawn Envoy. Let’s tell the team.”

Mako smiles.

-

 

_145_

When the Breach finally does rupture, it’s almost midnight.

Chuck rolls out of bed as soon as the alarm sounds, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and pulling on his shirt. Max raises his head and huffs sleepily as he passes. Chuck scratches his ears and whispers, “Be good,” before he heads out the door. 

He suits up on autopilot, climbs into Striker’s Conn-Pod, syncs up with his dad. Orion Ranger and Zeus Leviathan are running systems checks to either side of them, pilots chirping in the comms.

A twelve jaeger drop. _This’ll be interesting._

 _“All right, kids,”_ Tendo says. _“We’ve got two Category Fours, codenames Otachi and Leatherback.”_

Stacker’s voice comes in next. _“Teams One and Two are to hold the Miracle Mile. Teams Three and Four will hang back and support as required. Good luck.”_

Chuck shifts his weight and bares his teeth at nothing. Striker’s leading Team Three. It’s not that he wants Cherno and Crimson to fail, it’s not that he wants any of the recruits dead, it’s just that he really, really wants to fight something.

There’s only so much he can get out of sparring with Raleigh _you are not going there while we are in the drift._ It’d be fair and balanced payback, but Chuck will take the high road. 

Tendo’s voice comes in. _“Leatherback has surfaced, engaging Teams One and Two. No sign of Otachi yet.”_

The word _leatherback_ gives his dad a memory of watching tiny little turtles digging their way out of the sand and struggling down towards the water, and Chuck sniggers, imagining a turtle the size of a kaiju. _We could flip it on it’s back and let it sit there_ watch it struggle—

There’s an explosion of electric blue light out on the water.

 _“Fuck!”_ Chuck doesn’t recognise the voice, but his dad does— _Sassoon, one of Banshee Meteor’s pilots. “What just happened? It—it—none of the other jaegers are moving!”_

Tendo speaks over him. _“—some kind of EMP. Cherno, Crimson, Delta, Mirror, and Titan have been disabled.”_

_“Who else deployed, Tendo?”_

_“Who is this?”_

_“Vanessa. Surprise!_ Who else fucking deployed? _”_

_“Banshee’s at the Miracle Mile, still active. Two teams behind her. Striker, Orion, and Zeus, and Gipsy, Bombshell, and Dawn.”_

_“Get Gipsy and Dawn out there_ now. _Their systems are closed, won’t lose anything vital to the EMP. Orion too, the ovonics should hold up. Where’s the other kaiju?”_

_“Tracking it.”_

His dad gives the orders for Orion to go with Gipsy and Dawn. They watch impatiently as the jaegers wade out to save their disabled friends. That, of course, is when Otachi lunges out of the water.

They bring their arms up to grapple with it, but it has a tail too, with grasping, stabbing claws, and when they open their chest to hit it with missiles it _sprays acid_ into it, but like no acid Chuck’s ever seen or heard of, a toxic blue glowing ooze that eats through metal and plastic like it’s nothing. They shout and curse and flinch away and then Zeus steps in and slams a fist into Otachi, electrocuting it. Otachi screams and pulls away to claw at Zeus, and then there’s a small explosion—Bombshell, launching missiles from more than a hundred metres away. Otachi screams again and dives into the water, swimming hard for the mainland. 

They don’t have a hope in hell of catching her before she makes landfall. Striker’s missiles are mostly molten slag. 

“Bombshell, take point!” his dad snaps. “Zeus, on her left!”

They fall into a loose triangle. Bombshell’s still got plenty of missiles, and she has massive spikes or spears or something on her forearms for close-up work. Striker has her sting blades and her pulse launcher, neither worth much at long range. Zeus’ fists crackle with electricity and the Gatling guns on her shoulders are spinning up.

Chuck grins. “Yeah, we can make this work.”

They fall into single file as they hit the mainland, following Otachi’s trail of destruction down a main street. Where the fuck is it? “Bombshell,  you see her?”

_“I got nothin’. Choppers? Got a visual?”_

A building to the right crumbles and Otachi lunges at Bombshell, spraying her missile launchers with acid. Then she’s away again, bounding over the rubble. Zeus fires after her but she’s too quick, _too clever, using the city for cover._

_“Fuck me!”_

_“That really fucking hurt!”_

Chuck can’t actually distinguish between the Riley sisters’ voices, but at least they’re agreeing about something. _Funny, people think about us that way._

 _“Leatherback’s down,”_ Tendo says. _“Three jaegers en route to Otachi.”_

 _That’s not right._ There should be four—Banshee had still been in service, then three sent to join her, unless one of them’s been taken down _or a Conn-Pod was compromised and one’s staying behind to help with a rescue, don’t buy trouble_ —

Otachi appears again, dropping directly onto Zeus’ back and taking out her Gatling guns with its acid. Then it launches away again.

Chuck has time to wonder why it’s taking out their long range weapons first before wings snap open from its forelimbs and it starts to fucking fly. 

_“Son of a bitch just made the wall twice as useless,”_ says one of Zeus’ pilots, _Attano, piloting with his daughter_. 

“No shit,” Chuck mutters. “What the fuck is she up to?”

“Back to back,” his dad says. “In a circle. We need to be able to see where she goes.”

Bombshell crouches, one hand braced against the ground, the other lifted so the metal spear is perfectly vertical. Zeus pounds her fists together and adopts a wide-legged stance. They ready Striker’s sting blades and wait. 

Otachi swoops low overhead, a strafing run, blasting that damned blue acid at them. Bombshell leaps up as she passes and manages to score a hit against her belly with the spear, but it doesn’t bring Otachi down,and Zeus’ head is a smouldering wreck. The pilots are housed in the chest, so they should yet be safe, but their fists aren’t sparking with electricity any more. 

_What is she looking for?_ Or was she just biding her time for this moment, when she’d taken out anything that could hit her at range and just had to take her time to pick them off? 

They get their answer when Otachi doesn’t return. Chuck can make out the lethal blue glow of her acid, maybe a few city blocks from here. 

“Zeus, head back to the coastline,” his dad says. “Bombshell, with us.” 

_“Roger that.”_

_“Yes sir.”_

They have to take out the wings, or disable her acid somehow, _preferably both but we’ll take what we can get._ He’s not ready. He has to be ready. 

They run. 

_“Just hang in there, guys,”_ Tendo says. _“Backup ETA two minutes.”_

Otachi’s tearing at a kaiju shelter, acid eating through cement and brick the same way it did plastic and metal, and really, what the hell is that stuff? Chuck spots a familiar face in the wide-eyed crowd. _The drift goes two ways._ It’s after Newt. 

They close in fast. Bombshell drives a spear through Otachi’s tail and into the concrete below, putting all of her weight into keeping her pinned. Striker dances around Otachi’s front end, ducking in to slash with the sting blades and ducking out again before it can line up a shot with the acid. More importantly, they keep it’s attention off Bombshell.

That’s how Dawn and Orion find them. 

_“Get back!”_ That voice is definitely Shepard, the female twin piloting Orion. _Never heard her raise her voice before. Better move fast._

Bombshell hauls her spear free and staggers back. Striker spins out of the way as Orion opens fire with a barrage of white spheres that either melt in smash open or melt and splash against Otachi’s hide, coating it thickly in ice crystals and hiding it behind a cloud of white smoke. Some kind of coolant, maybe. Dawn moves in and slams down her fists, _each armed with three long, curving claws like Wolverine,_ and Chuck receives a barrage of comic book panels as his dad tries to explain the comparison. 

Otachi’s tail is cut from its body by the blow, and a lot of its skin cracks and falls away, and the kaiju makes a noise that shatters every window in a several block radius. Gipsy arrives then, slower than the new models, and reaches into the roaring kaiju’s mouth. They realise what Gipsy’s doing and move in to help—a few blows from the sting blades, and Gipsy hauls Otachi’s tongue out and flings it away, trailing some kind of glowing blue sack. 

Otachi twists around, spine bending in an almost 180 degree arc. It grabs Gipsy with its rear claws and takes flight. 

They’re not much for physics but there’s no way anything on earth could gain altitude that fast holding something the size of Gipsy. They take a couple of pot shots with the pulse launcher, but Otachi’s too quick for them, the shots go wide.

There’s a flash of metal and suddenly Otachi’s falling, one wing severed from its body. Gipsy Danger crashes back down to earth and lies very, very still. Striker runs in and jumps, landing on Otachi’s back, and hacks at its neck until the head comes completely away. Behind them, Dawn Envoy roasts the tail with her chest mounted flame thrower until it finally stills.

“Otachi’s down,” his dad says. “Need a clean-up crew and casevac.”

 _“It’s on its way,”_ says Stacker. 

Chuck’s out of his harness and out of the Conn-Pod before he hears anything else. 

Gipsy’s not moving, and there’s nothing coming in over the comms. He runs, dodging around the spreading pool of Otachi’s blood. He slows a little as the Conn-Pod pops open and Mako climbs out, silhouetted against the light shining out from Hundun’s bones. 

By the time he gets there, Mako’s hauled Raleigh out of the pod and they’re leaning against each other, laughing breathlessly. Chuck scales the pod and drags Raleigh into a bruising kiss. 

-

_144_

It’s never dark in Kowloon; people are going about their business, and will continue to do so until the kaiju pass the Miracle Mile. As will, apparently, the camera crew he finds himself saddled with yet _again._ With twelve jaegers deployed, it shouldn’t be a concern, but Newt had talked about kaiju who could mimic jaeger abilities, maybe even deploy EMP attacks, and—

“Hermann.”

Hermann turns too fast and his bad leg nearly gives out, but there are strong arms holding him up and he’s looking into the most beautiful face he has ever seen.

He drops his cane and throws his arms around Vanessa.

She smells faintly of strawberries and baby powder, and when she kisses him he tastes cinnamon toothpaste. Her hair, falling around their faces, is damp. Fresh off a civilian plane, then, having stopped to refresh herself before she arrived, or she’d taste of the spearmint they give out at the Shatterdome. Something sharp digs into him at waist level.

He presses his face against the curve of her neck, breathes her in. “Where’s Roslin?”

“In London, with your sister. Too much contamination for me to want to bring her here.” Vanessa flaps a hand over his shoulder. He suspects she is gesturing at the massive skeleton that dominates the skyline and all it entails—the radioactive fallout and kaiju blue. “We can bring her down when it’s over.”

She twists away from him a little, bends down and collects his cane, pressing it back into his hands. Hermann steadies himself and drinks the sight of her in. She’s wrapped in a long, waterproof coat, and she has a heavy leather utility belt around her hips and a welding visor dangling from one hand. He can identify a soldering iron as the object that had dug into him. She’s looking at him with, he imagines, a rather similar expression to the one he wears when he looks at her. 

Hermann says, “I wish you weren’t here.”

Vanessa, bless her, understands. “It’s both of us or neither, darling.” She steps back and rolls her shoulders. “Show me the Pons.”

That, of course, is when the air raid sirens start.

They step into the helicopter, still trailed by the damnable camera crew, and take off. Vanessa demands, and receives, a communicator that links into the jaeger pilots. Hermann receives one as well, by dint of proximity.

_“—some kind of EMP. Cherno, Crimson, Delta, Mirror, and Titan have been disabled.”_

Vanessa snarls. 

Hermann takes her hand as she barks into her communicator, and switches his off. He watches out the window. It’s awful, listening when he can’t see what’s going on. He wishes, fervently, that Vanessa was not here; not without their daughter, not in danger, and not watching her beloved jaegers do battle. He knows her too well to believe she would leave without a fight, though. When she had been pregnant it had been one thing, avoiding any potential teratogen for Roslin’s sake. Without that consideration, there will be no way to dissuade her if she is bent on assisting them. 

The helicopter takes them high, and then, as an ominous blue glow moves through the water beneath them, further out to sea.

Hermann gapes at what he sees below them. 

He’d been under the impression that only five jaegers had been dead in the water, but there are six visible when the lights from nearly twenty buzzing helicopters pass over them. One appears to have had its head torn open. 

Vanessa presses against his back and cranes her head to see. “That’s Banshee. Shit.”

The kaiju is perched atop the back of another jaeger, tearing at its shoulders—and then another jaeger arrives, tackling it back into the water. Two more jaegers are approaching behind it, but the first seems to have things well in hand, stabbing at the kaiju with long claws set into its hands and leaving long lines of glowing blue blood in its wake. One of the other jaegers arrives—Gipsy Danger, he sees, as the searchlights pass over it again—and circles around behind the kaiju, tearing at its back. Something, some kind of bioluminescent organ, comes free and is flung away, splashing down into the bay. Newt will be furious if the organ is lost entirely.

Vanessa’s grip on his hand tightens as the third jaeger moves in, firing white spheres that seem to melt away in the air, becoming clear liquid that splashes the kaiju and lets off clouds of white gas—liquid nitrogen, he realises, and then the first jaeger rams its claws into the kaiju and wrenches. The thick, wrinkled skin and heavy carapace have snap-frozen; under the pressure they shatter apart.

Even effectively flayed, the kaiju is still moving. Gipsy Danger fires half a dozen rounds from its plasma caster into it and it flails and falls still. 

“Fuck yes!” Vanessa shouts, loud enough to deafen him even with his headphones on. “That was fucking beautiful!” She leaves his side to crawl forward and talk to the pilot. Hermann watches as the three jaegers turn, leaving the kaiju’s corpse slowly sinking,and head towards the shoreline. 

The helicopter turns back towards Kowloon, and Hermann can already see signs of the other kaiju’s passing—phosphorescent blood and a jaeger with a badly damaged head. Vanessa hisses when she sees it and he takes both her hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles. 

Vanessa’s head snaps up as they finally reach Kowloon and she leaps to her feet, nearly braining herself against the roof. “Otachi’s down! That’s what you get for messing with my babies, bitch! I’m a motherfucking genius!” She falls into his lap and kisses him messily, strong hands cradling his face. 

Someone clears their throat, and Hermann realises abruptly that the helicopter has landed and the pilot is waiting for them to disembark. He pulls away from Vanessa with a flush. She, of course, only laughs and helps him to his feet.

They’re quite close to Otachi’s corpse. A team of soldiers help carry the equipment towards her severed head. Gipsy is lying still and smoking faintly, her pilots being winched into a helicopter marked with a red cross. The other jaegers are all bearing clear signs of battle, but are leaving under their own steam, walking out towards the water.

“Mother of fucks,” Vanessa sighs. “I have no idea how we’re gonna fix that launcher.” She’s so happy, though, flushed, almost glowing, and Hermann leans in to kiss her cheek.

The soldiers unload the Pons by Otachi’s head and Vanessa goes to work, soldering wires and doing a host of other things Hermann is quite comfortable not understanding at all. He takes a seat on a nearby piece of rubble and pulls out a notepad, running the calculations again. 

He’s almost dislodged from his seat when Newt attempts to tackle him. 

He can’t bring himself to mind so much, even though Newt is absolutely filthy. Hermann returns the embrace as fiercely as he is able. 

“Hermann! This is Hannibal Chau!” Newt waves at the large, ugly creature behind him. It is wearing a red silk suit and _golden shoes_ , of all things. Hermann bites down on a comment; perhaps _Really? I rather thought it a shaved gorilla._

Vanessa is less prudent. “Oh great, another fucking white fella. Just what we need.”

Chau laughs. Newt beams and flings himself at her, and is swept up in a bear hug for his pains. 

The large and ugly creature does have a purpose, after all; it directs several scavengers wearing full protective gear to begin work on preserving the kaiju’s corpse. Vanessa returns to the Pons, pronouncing herself ‘nearly done’. Hermann gets to his feet and joins Newt at her side. 

“Uhh, you’ve got too many squid caps there.”

“Nope. I’m coming in with you.”

Hermann had suspected something along these lines when she first arrived, but Newt appears flabbergasted. “You, uh, you really don’t have to—I mean, we’re already going in.”

“Not without me. I saw the medical reports last time. Three brains are better than two, right?” Vanessa flips a welding visor down, effectively ending the conversation. Hermann ushers Newt away as she pulls a blowtorch from her tool belt. 

Newt shakes his head. “Man, some days I don’t get her. Hey, did you see Hannibal? I’m gonna climb that like a _tree._ ”

“Thus demonstrating, in a matter of sentences, why we are concerned for your safety,” Hermann says.

Newt snorts. “Yeah, sure. Hey, is that a thing now? Do I have to introduce him to you before I get my mack on, like meeting the parents or something? What if you hate him? Do you have veto powers? Is he invited to group sex? I don’t know how this works!”

“Perhaps a matter for later, Newton.” 

Newt shrugs.

They do find themselves near Chau, as he shouts at the radio in his hand. 

“How can there be a heartbeat? It’s dead!”

The radio crackles. _“I swear, boss,”_ and Hermann can hear it too, a slow, rhythmic thumping. 

Newt brushes past Chau and crouches in front of a screen showing a live camera feed. Hermann bends down to look over his shoulder. There, the creature’s vast abdomen; the secondary brain, clearly too badly damaged by the nitrogen to drift with; and further down, something in the blue viscera, pulsing…

“Oh my God,” he breathes.

“No. No no,” Newt says. “Can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?” Chau snaps. 

Newt gulps. “She’s pregnant.”

The kaiju foetus tears its way free, screeching like the damned. Hermann flinches back from watching it on the screen, takes Newt’s arm and leads him away from the kaiju’s corpses as quickly as he can manage. There are screams—human screams, this time—and then static on the radio. 

Behind them there is an awful wet sound as the foetus—baby now, Hermann thinks absurdly, technically it’s been born—rips its mother’s corpse open and lunges forward. He glances over his shoulder. The beast is the size of an eighteen-wheeler, and it still has its umbilical cord wrapped around most of its body, including its neck. 

Hermann stops running and watches as the baby strangles itself to death on its own cord.

“Well.” Newt takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes. “That was anticlimactic.”

They walk towards the baby, still a little cautious. Hermann winces at the implication; when the Breach opens and three and four and five kaiju start coming through at once, all it would take would be one breeding pair to slip away, just to lie low for a time…

“Knew it couldn’t last!” Chau’s rasping voice. “Lungs weren’t formed. Ugly little bastard.” 

Chau flips a knife at the baby. It stabs into its nose, and Chau steps forward to retrieve it. The baby rears up, opens its mouth, and swallows Chau whole.

That resolves some of Newt’s questions, at least.

The baby takes a few more shambling steps forward and collapses, letting out an awful high-pitched wheeze with such force that it ruffles Hermann’s hair and clothes, even at this distance. 

Vanessa, with her usual insular focus, has not even looked up from her work on the Pons. 

“Ready!” She has a cable as thick as a python wound several times around her body, the end in her hands. “You’re gonna see what this bad boy can really do. Hey, wonder if the foetus has an fragmented skull, like human babies?”

The baby’s skull is fully intact, but has all the resilience of a boiled egg. The heavy metal spike punches through easily. Vanessa passes out squid caps and they sit by the Pons.

Newt has one of Chau’s ridiculous gold shoes in his hands. Vanessa is running her hands over their makeshift Pons as though it’s a pet. Hermann sighs.

“Ready when you are, I supposed.”

Newt fishes out his tape recorder and switches it on. “Kaiju-human drift experiment, take two. Doctor Newton Geiszler, Doctor Hermann Gottlieb, and Doctor Vanessa Sharp drifting with… uh, codename Otachi Junior.” He drops the recorder back into his pocket and says, very firmly, “We’re gonna rock this.” 

“Yes we are,” Vanessa says, and hits the button. 

The rush of blue is slower, this time, easier to bear, but there’s still the memories _Otachi’s tongue, uncurling in front of him like a strange blue flower, brushing delicately over his chest, and he doesn’t want this any more, he doesn’t want to meet a kaiju, he doesn’t want to die_ **“If someone’s hurting you—” because of course he can see the bandages, she’s wearing a crop top. It’s forty degrees out and she hadn’t even thought about it when she put it on, and now she has to explain that she’s the kind of dickhead who runs _towards_ the overheating plasma caster** biting her lip and flushing pink, and this is so strange, seeing the same memory from her point of view. She hadn’t noticed the way she smelled of antiseptic and sweat but he had, and he’s a little embarrassed to let her see the way he loved her even then **wanted her to feel ashamed, but all she has is a kind of dull surprise, that someone would want her gone badly enough to go to all this trouble—there is literally nowhere that isn’t plastered with photos, surely the printing costs alone** _watching them flirt across the laboratory, it’s cute but they don’t even seem to realise he’s there, and it’s a little disappointing until Hermann declares her incorrigible and crosses over to Newt’s side, sardonically requesting intelligent company, and Vanessa throws a crayon at his head_ resting his cheek against Newt’s chest, feeling his heart beating slow and easy under layers of ink and muscle and bone. He’s so warm _not quite manic but close, so close, not able to sit still or focus or think at all until Vanessa grabs him by the hair and shoves him to his knees at Hermann’s feet, and then all he has is certainty_ **the kind of zen that comes with such delicate work, whether it’s laying down wires or putting on fake eyelashes, and if she wasn’t so focussed on keeping her hands steady it would make her laugh**

They sync. 

Pentecost has given them ( **you** ) purpose, a simple goal, and they find it easily enough. The Breach will not open without scanning a kaiju’s DNA. Something so simple _don’t think about it, what if they hear_ they turn away from that information and look for more, more about the cloning process, about the vast biomechanical assembly lines that birth the kaiju. 

It’s fascinating; Hermann has access to every experiment any of them have ever conducted, every article read, every doctorate completed. He has Newt’s vast, insatiable curiosity, Vanessa’s razor-edged intuition, their knowledge of the ways biology and technology interface giving him the numbers and formulae he needs to process what they’re seeing. 

Newt’s talking, he registers, rattling off equations and numbers, DNA sequences, the compositions of various metals. Vanessa’s already thinking about applications—prosthetic limbs wired into the user’s nervous system, cloned organs for transplant, jaegers that don’t need pilots, and half a hundred other things, flashing into their minds and then gone as soon as Newt gives them voice.

Newt’s the one who pulls them out, in the end, slow, reluctant, but conscious of how long they’ve been there, noting the way their hands are starting to tremble. Hermann lingers, takes the time to press his mind against each of them, to show them his depth of feeling; he could never summon the words, never sure how to make it clear, but this is something he can give them.

When they break the drift, each of them has taken one of his hands.

They are distracted from the moment as the baby’s corpse is opened from within, and Chau comes sliding out in a river of effluvia. 

“Where,” he growls, “is my goddamn _shoe?_ ”

-

_117_

Mako frowns. “If you push too hard, you will just hurt yourself all over again.”

Raleigh lets the weight fall with a thump. “Jesus, Mako, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“I’m sorry.” He knows her well enough to realise he isn’t. “You were told to rest your knee and shoulder for six weeks. It has not even been four.”

“I can’t just lie around.”

“You do not need to lie around. There is plenty of work.” Raleigh sighs heavily and picks up the weight. Before he can continue she says, very gently, “You’re not the only one you’re hurting.”

It’s manipulative, and he knows she’s manipulating him, and he puts the weight down anyway. She wraps him in a hug, then pulls back. “You should also take a shower.”

He laughs at that, which she considers a victory. She puts the weights away for him and they walk back to his quarters in comfortable silence.

When they’re in his room, with the door closed, Mako rests a hand on his uninjured shoulder. “Raleigh. I know you’re grieving.”

Raleigh sits on his bed and pats the space beside him. Mako joins him. 

“Owen was still in the drift when Leatherback got him,” he says. “Sassoon’s a wreck. I… I’m remembering. Not that I ever stopped remembering what happened to Yancy, but it’s hitting me harder.”

Mako does not speak, knowing it will not help. Instead she gets up and puts the kettle on. 

Raleigh keeps talking. “I feel… I want to help him, y’know? I _should_ help him, I might be the only person alive who knows what he’s going through, but… I can’t do it. Even thinking about it…”

Mako hunts for a tea bag. “Sassoon is not expected to continue as a pilot, Raleigh, but you are. If it is better for your mental health to leave it alone, then that is what you must do.” She finds one, and a clean cup, just in time for the water to boil. 

“That’s true.” Mako hears Raleigh moving behind her, the rustle of his sheets. “And it’s not like there isn’t help. The shrinks were really great when I was discharged.”

When the tea has finished steeping, Mako carefully lays the tea bag out to dry so she can reuse it, and takes the cup over to Raleigh. He’s lying on his bed, shoulders propped up by his pillows, staring at the photo of him and Yancy. 

She presses the tea into his hands and lies down beside him.

Mako had always suspected, if only from the name, that the ‘drift hangover’ would be unpleasant, but it’s not; it holds nothing she would not feel through a natural empathy. Raleigh is clearly hurting, and so her heart hurts for him. That she shares his pain in a more literal way does not make a real difference. It allows her to know what will help him, and offer it, and that is worth any amount of phantom pain in her right side. 

Raleigh sips his tea. They lie in silence for long, slow minutes, her head resting on his good shoulder, his ankle hooked around hers. 

Raleigh says, “I’ve been kind of a dick, huh.”

“You have done nothing to be sorry for,” Mako says. “But perhaps you would feel better if you joined us, next time we socialise.”

He doesn’t respond, but she can feel him giving in.

-

_104_

“Did you do your interview yet?”

Newt shudders theatrically. “Yes. It was awful. At least they’ll be gone soon.”

“Not soon enough,” Vanessa says grimly. “Apparently they’re coming to the party. Who can enjoy themselves, knowing that someone’s filming their drunken shenanigans?”

“Shenanigans is such a great word. Okay, through here.”

Newt raps on the door, three knocks, a pause, then two. It’s a little like being in a spy movie, if the spy movie was also a porno, and also, there were no spies, just terrifying gangsters. 

“You owe me so many drinks for this,” Vanessa says. “So many.”

“Hey, it’s cool, I’m making jägerbombs, plenty to—ha! Jaeger bombs!”

Newt giggles, and Vanessa cackles, and the door opens. 

Newt makes the introductions. “Vanessa, this is Weifong Steele, I’m 99% sure that’s not her real name, but it sounds really badass, which is cool, because she’s terrifying. We’re here to see Hannibal, ma’am.”

Weifong raises an eyebrow at his babble but waves them through. Newt resists the urge to rub her shaved head. He tried it once and she put him in a wrist lock so painful he’s pretty sure the kaiju hive mind felt it. He keeps his hands to himself now.

Hannibal’s overseeing his minions and smoking a cigar that’s probably Cuban or made out of money or something. He looks pretty pleased to see Newt, as far as Hannibal ever looks pleased about anything that isn’t a profit, and kind of surprised to see Vanessa. 

“Ms Sharp.”

“ _Doctor_ Sharp,” Vanessa says, and her voice is very sweet and light, with just a trace of Hermann’s clipped British tones, and Newt kind of wants to crawl under a table and hide. “Let’s talk.”

“Do I really have to be here for this?” Newt asks. “I mean I could just wait outside—”

Vanessa says, “No.”

“Damn.”

Hannibal puts his cigar into a kaiju bone ash tray. Newt’s pretty sure that’s part of Bonesquid, one of the hooked toothy growths that had covered her tentacles. 

“Well then, _Doctor_ Sharp.” Hannibal smiles. Hannibal insists on wearing a gold grill at all times, including some really inconvenient times, so it’s not a nice smile. Some days Newt isn’t sure why he likes Hannibal. “Right this way.”

They walk, and Hannibal puts one of his massive hands on Newt’s shoulder and squeezes hard enough to leave finger-shaped bruises, and Newt remembers why he likes Hannibal. 

Hannibal’s office is pretty familiar to Newt now, because he spends a lot of time here shouting about the properties of kaiju scale and bone and blood, and occasionally getting fucked on one or more of the surfaces in it. It’s a pretty great way to spend the day. There’s massive red and gold tapestries hanging on most of the walls, and display cases with Otachi Junior’s entire leg and Leatherback’s freaky EMP organ in them, and a huge desk with a couple of big leather chairs in front of it. Newt drops into one of those chairs and Vanessa takes the other. Hannibal takes the massive, high-backed chair on the other side of the desk. Newt’s pretty sure it has to be custom made, because he’s never seen any piece of office furniture that looks so much like a throne.

“What did you want to discuss, Doctor?” 

Vanessa smiles. “Newt’s very important to me, Mister Chau. He’s part of my family. It’s become apparent that he intends for you to be a recurring feature in his life.”

Newt drops his face into his hands and groans. Vanessa pats his shoulder briskly.

“Newt is, of course, a grown man, and he can do as he pleases. But you, Mister Chau, have something of a reputation. Extortion. Violence. Murder.”

Hannibal scowls at her. “What, you want me to deny it?”

“God, no.” Vanessa snorts. “Newt, for whatever strange, unfathomable reason, enjoys your company, even knowing what you are. I want him to be happy. No, I’m just here to make sure you’re aware of the consequences for making him _un_ happy.”

“Really.” Hannibal leans back in his chair. “And what might those be?”

“I’m sure you know who I am, Mister Chau. I’ve been building jaegers since 2017. My particular specialisation is _weaponry._ My husband, who I’m sure you’re also familiar with, specialises in artificial intelligence. Prior to joining the PPDC, he was writing code for spy satellites.” Vanessa pauses. Newt stares at her. He’s kind of scared right now and she’s not even speaking to him. “To be perfectly explicit, Mister Chau, if you upset Newt, if you make him cry, if you hurt him in a manner he does not consent to… there will be nowhere on earth you can run, and no bunker in the world that will protect you from me.”

Hannibal’s swallow is very audible.

“You’re a clever man, so I’m sure you would attempt to remove me from the picture before doing anything that might upset me,” Vanessa says, still in that sweet, gentle tone. “Let me disabuse you of the notion. I have survived being electrocuted, being hit by a plasma caster, and being stepped on by a kaiju. _I cannot be killed by anything._ ” She stands up, smiling. “Thank you for your time.”

She bends down to kiss Newt’s cheek, says, “I’ll see you soon, darling,” and sweeps out of the room. 

There’s a long silence. Newt examines his fingernails, then stares at Otachi Junior’s leg. He has some space on his right calf,  maybe he can put something in there, a tribute to the little kaiju who helped them destroy her race. 

“Huh,” says Hannibal. When Newt looks at his face he’s grinning. “I like your girlfriend, kid.”

-

_99_

Raleigh finds the right room because even from two hallways away, he can hear a bass drop and a chant of “Jaeger BOMBS! Jaeger BOMBS!”

The pilots from Gold Resurrection, Serin and Drana, stagger into him in the doorway. Serin blushes, Drana giggles, and the pair amble away down the hall, leaning on each other heavily. 

Raleigh gets to the improvised bar just in time to watch Newt flick the first of a series of carefully balanced shot glasses, and joins in the cheer that goes up.

“Becket! Raleigh! Raleigh Becket!” Vanessa slides through the crowd and slings an arm around his shoulders, wrapped in some kind of floaty daffodil-yellow dress. “Drink up motherfucker, I’mma teach you white boys how to dance!”

Raleigh laughs and accepts the jägerbomb she presses into his hands. “What, you’re not teaching Hermann?”

“He’s looking after the baby. Plus he already knows how to dance, you think I’d neglect his education like that?” 

Vanessa graciously lets him finish his drink before dragging him onto the dance floor. Yancy was always better at this kind of thing; Raleigh’s only moves are a very sad kind of white boy shuffle. Vanessa really is a good dancer, though, lithe and graceful, and it’s easy to follow her movements. Unfortunately she cannot sing worth a damn. Raleigh focuses on the pulse of the music and keeping time with the sway of her hips. 

Chuck leans up against him after a minute, pulling him away. “Okay, okay, my turn.”

“What? You want some brown sugar too? C’mere, boy.” Vanessa grabs Chuck’s hands and drags him onto the dance floor, winking at Raleigh as she goes. Chuck’s face is priceless. Raleigh laughs, and goes back to the bar for another drink.

He finds Mako by her bubbling happiness, following her through the drift. She’s dancing with Sasha and Aleksis, very badly, stumbling in a glittery blue dress and a pair of borrowed high heels. 

Raleigh drapes himself over her back and says, “You’ll break your ankle doing that,” directly into her ear. Mako just laughs and leans into him, swaying to the beat. 

They’re still swaying when Chuck finds them, licking a path up his neck and biting at his earlobe. Raleigh shivers. “Hey, hey, my copilot’s right here.”

“Don’t care.” 

“ _I_ care,” Mako says. “You two have fun, I want to dance with Jin.” 

Raleigh releases her and turns around to lean into Chuck’s chest. He’s wearing a tight white T-shirt instead of his usual loose khaki. Raleigh can see the shadows of every one of his muscles. It’s a good look. 

He pulls back when he sees the camera in the corner. 

“Uh, hey, we’re being filmed.”

“Don’t care,” Chuck says again. “Do you?”

“Not really, but—”

“Come _here,_ ” Chuck says, and pulls him in close. “Dance with me.”

Raleigh grins and kisses him. Chuck’s mouth tastes of jägerbombs and cheap vodka. Knowing this opportunity may never arise again, Raleigh lets Chuck pull him out onto the dance floor. 

-

_63_

The techs salvage as much of Banshee Meteor as they can, using her wiring and power sources to repair and upgrade the other jaegers, but in the end her skeleton, complete with ruined Conn-Pod, is left alone and untouched in her docking bay. Stacker makes the call. 

Sassoon attends the decommissioning, and no one mentions his tears when they finally hook Banshee up to half a dozen Jumphawks and haul her away to her final resting place in Oblivion Bay. 

Stacker presents him with a fragment of Banshee’s armour, taken from her arm and embossed with the logo Sassoon and Owen had chosen. Sassoon’s tears come faster then, but he returns Stacker’s salute and marches away with dignity. 

Raleigh goes to him afterwards. Stacker spots them in a corner, talking in low voices, and gives them their privacy.

D’Anna’s waiting for him when he gets back to his office. 

“Ms Biers.” He opens the door and ushers her in. She takes a seat in front of his desk. “What can I do for you?”

“My producer’s pushing for results,” she says. “I can’t put him off much longer.”

“We’ll certainly be sad to see you go.”

“For more reasons than you think, Marshall.’ D’Anna meets his gaze without flinching. “I know you’re planning something, something that could _end the kaiju war._ Trust me. You want that to be publicised.”

“Kaiju cultists are enough of a security concern for us without knowledge of our future strategies becoming public knowledge,” Stacker points out. He makes a note to find out who gave her that information. 

“Perhaps you don’t want it to be publicised _now,_ ” D’Anna concedes. “But don’t you think the after-action report will go down easier with some nice glossy publicity shots? Footage with some heroic anthem playing in the background, showing our heroes going off to war?”

Stacker does not enjoy acceding that the media has a point, as general rule, but D’Anna has the right idea. As soon as their military goals are completed, his job will be to protect his pilots—not only from cultists, but from politicians, journalists, and all the other parasites who will eat away at them.

“What are you proposing, Ms Biers?”

D’Anna smiles. “I’m proposing that we create a documentary, in perhaps eight or ten parts, discussing the history of the jaeger program. I have more than enough archival footage to begin that process. Let me and my crew stay on site until you finish your mission, and the last three or four parts will be dedicated to your Shatterdome, and how it saved the world.”

“It’s a tempting offer.” It is, damn her. Stacker has no idea how to refuse. “However. If any part of your documentary features even a single one of my staff, I want final approval over it.”

“That will be most of them.” D’Anna shrugs. “Doctors Geiszler, Gottlieb, and Sharp have given extensive interviews on the jaeger program. Doctor Sharp in particular was very helpful.”

Stacker’s eyes narrow. “How helpful?” 

“You must know, Marshall, that Doctor Sharp is no longer being paid to be here. While she had several non-disclosure agreements with the PPDC and the Australian government, these only apply to work done while she was in their service. Anything outside of that definition…” D’Anna trails off suggestively. 

Stacker was introduced to Vanessa the day after she repaired a jaeger that was desperately needed on the front lines in thirty minutes flat. That alone wouldn’t have been notable enough to warrant an introduction, considering the minimal nature of the damage, but Vanessa had done it during a power outage and without her tools, using only a cigarette lighter, a pair of shoelaces, some duct tape, and one of her earrings. She’s certainly clever enough to find a loophole in a vaguely-written NDA. 

“Very well, Ms Biers.” Stacker stands. “I expect to see your work by the end of the week.”

D’Anna shakes his hand and takes her leave. Stacker summons Vanessa.

She arrives with a sleeping Roslin in her arms, looking at him from under her eyelashes in a way that suggests she knows exactly why she’s been called. 

“If you think my desire to let Roslin sleep outweighs my desire to detail exactly why your behaviour has been unacceptable,” Stacker tells her, “you will want to reconsider.”

-

_41_

“Man, my hair looks like crap in this shot.”

Chuck glances at Jin, who nods and slaps Cheung upside the head.

The documentary isn’t as bad as he thought it would be. The first couple of hours were mostly the history, intercut with old footage of Schoenfield and Lightcap being interviewed and more recent interviews of Newt and Hermann and Vanessa. Now they’re getting more interesting. The Wei triplets are on screen, shots of them playing basketball and checking each other’s gear before they step into the Conn-Pod underneath Hu’s explanation of the end of China’s jaeger program. 

A guy Chuck doesn’t know comes on, talking about how they’re all heroes; the pilots, the engineers, even the janitors. 

Raleigh asks, “Hey, who is that guy?”

“Don’t know,” says Chuck. 

“I have nothing,” says Hu.

A chorus of negatives come from the room. Chuck twists around. “Hey Tendo, is he one of yours?”

“No, man, not mine. Vanessa? He from your team?”

Vanessa squints at the screen. “I think… I think that’s the delivery boy.”

There’s silence for a moment as they watch him talking, then an explosion of laughter. 

Now there’s footage of the triplets sparring, with Stacker’s voice explaining the value of jaeger jutsu in evaluating compatibility. Mako appears on the screen. 

_“It’s the best way to get to know your copilot,”_ the on-screen Mako says. _“It’s how Raleigh and I discovered our compatibility.”_

“Do I really sound like that?” Mako asks plaintively. 

_“It’s also a good way to relieve stress and work out disagreements,”_ the Mako in the film says. The footage changes to Chuck and Raleigh sparring, hand-to-hand instead of with hanbo. Mako’s voice continues. _“Raleigh had many disagreements with Chuck before they began sparring regularly. Now they’ve gotten… close. Very close.”_ The film seals the deal by cutting to Raleigh and Chuck kissing at a party. 

“Close enough that I can’t sleep without earplugs any more,” Mako says, and the room rings with laughter again. Chuck flushes hotly. 

The rest is pretty benign. There’s footage of Raleigh talking about drift synchronism and how hard it can be to match people up even with the help of an EEG, Chuck talking about the constant pressure he was under when the kaiju came regularly and the way they train the pilots to manage it, Sasha and Aleksis being asked about how to balance personal life with jaeger piloting. 

“Spoiler alert: it cannot be done,” says Sasha, before her on-screen counterpart starts talking, and there’s more laughter around the room. It goes on that way for a while longer, mostly shots of the senior pilots talking about the war and the recruits. 

They take a break to stretch their legs. When they get back Cheung is passing out popcorn, seasoned with what tastes like actual sea salt. Chuck’s impressed; he hasn’t tasted real salt in years.

As the documentary wraps up the story of how the new jaegers were built and matched to their pilots, the room goes a little quiet. Chuck nudges Raleigh’s hand with his own, knowing what’s about to happen. The crew did get some beautiful footage of the fight against Leatherback, but that just means they have a front-row seat when it rips Owen from Banshee’s Conn-Pod and throws him into Titan’s chest. The lights from the helicopters show the splash of red against the pale metal of Titan’s armour until the pounding water washes it away, and Owen’s corpse, twisted and broken, drifting out to sea. There’s some audio from the comms, too, Tendo and Stacker demanding an update, and Sassoon screaming in pain.

Raleigh grips Chuck’s hand, tight enough to turn their knuckles white. 

There’s more great footage of the fight against Otachi. Chuck winces when he sees the acid melting through Striker’s missile launcher. At the time, high on adrenaline, it hadn’t felt any worse than a punch, but in the film the extent of the damage is clear. They’re lucky it didn’t eat through Striker’s entire body. Dawn Envoy and Orion Ranger teaming up to blast Otachi with ice and shatter pieces off it will never stop being completely awesome, though, so he focuses on that, and not the aerial view of him sprinting towards the downed Gipsy. 

There’s footage of that creepy kaiju dealer turning up and getting eaten, and Newt and Hermann and Vanessa drifting, though that has the audio removed, and shots of one of the Kaidanovskies’ parties, cut to make it look like they’re celebrating the victory. The documentary covers Banshee being scavenged for parts and the restoration of the damaged jaegers, goes to Banshee Meteor’s decommissioning service, lingering uncomfortably on Sassoon’s tears, and then it ends on a shot of the war clock, still counting down. 

“Well,” Chuck says, “apparently she wants to make another two hours. We better give her something to film.”

-

_14_

Raleigh has no idea what to say. 

It’s a strange feeling. Raleigh almost always knows what to say, right down to knowing when to shut up. He doesn’t have a problem talking to Chuck when they’re beating the crap out of each other in the sparring room, but apparently walking through Kowloon is too far out of his comfort zone. 

Chuck knows where they’re going, which is a blessing, because it means Raleigh can just follow him and enjoy the view. When they do arrive, at a hole-in-the-wall dim-sum joint peaking out from under Hundun’s pelvis, they find a seat in a booth and Chuck orders in reasonably competent Chinese. As soon as the waiter’s gone, an awkward silence descends. 

“Are you actually gonna talk to me at some point, old timer?” Chuck asks. 

Raleigh smirks. Trust Chuck to come out with something confrontational in the first three minutes. “I dunno, you’re the little shit who’s never been on a date.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask you to take me out.”

“Sure, but if you’d hinted any harder you might have sprained something.” Chuck kicks him under the table. Raleigh laughs. “I don’t know how this works, I was building a wall in Alaska for five years. Doesn’t really lend itself to a social life.”

Chuck snorts. “Yeah, and until recently I’d spent all my time either piloting a jaeger or training to get better at piloting a jaeger. I don’t know how this works either.”

“You know, that’s actually kind of sad.” Chuck kicks him again and Raleigh gives him his best shit-eating grin. “Jesus, stop with the wife-beating—whoa, hey, is that Newt?”

Chuck twists around. The side of the restaurant is just a collapsed vertebra, and they can see through to Newt walking by, with a very tall man in a red suit and gold shoes. 

“Newt and his pet gorilla, yeah.” Chuck leans forward. “He has a stuffed kaiju. Where do you even get one of those?”

“I’m not getting you a stuffed kaiju,” Raleigh says. He aims for stern, but he starts laughing halfway through the sentence. 

Chuck turns back to face him and bats his eyelashes. “Not even if I put out?”

Raleigh opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “...let me think about that.” Chuck snorts. “Man, how’d Newt even end up with that guy?”

Chuck shrugs. “Knowing Newt, I’d guess he just yelled about kaiju until someone started humping his leg.”

They’re both still laughing when the food arrives, which gives Raleigh a convenient excuse to stop talking and fill his mouth. Considering it’s only a couple of points off their ration cards, the food’s really good, and really filling. Chuck’s apparently happy to eat in silence as well, although he does hook his foot around Raleigh’s under the table. Footsie’s probably out of the question when both of them are wearing combat boots, but Raleigh appreciates the gesture. 

Between them they clear every plate on the table, and Raleigh’s searching for something to say or do that isn’t just more antagonistic when Aleksis drops heavily into the booth beside him. 

“Children!” Sasha drops into the booth beside Aleksis. “You’re on a date! How cute.” She’s wearing the same red lipstick she wears into battle. Raleigh’s flight or fight reflex abruptly kicks into overdrive, with an emphasis on _flight._

“This is not a real date,” Aleksis says solemnly. “Real dates should have gunfire, and land mines, and infiltration behind enemy lines.”

“It’s how we met,” Sasha says fondly. “But you, children, this is not a date for you! You are fighters!”

“We can’t exactly infiltrate enemy lines until the Breach opens,” Chuck says. 

“Next best thing, then,” Aleksis says. “Come play paintball, you against us.”

“You two play _paintball?_ ” Raleigh asks. This information does not fit at all with his image of the Kaidanovskies.

Sasha nods. “We are too evenly matched, every week we end up in a tie.”

“Oh God,” says Raleigh.

“Hell yeah,” says Chuck.

The Kaidanovskies lead them on a long and winding route down Hundun’s tail and out to an old warehouse with most of its roof missing and paint splattering most of the outside. Most of the inside as well, as Raleigh sees when they step in. It might have once been a few stories of indoor sports courts, but the rubble left over from Hundun’s attack and a bunch of metal and webbing that’s evidently been dragged in by opportunistic paintballers leave them with a pretty interesting playing field. There’s obstacles, cover, and even a couple of decent sniper perches, and enough sunlight streaming down through the roof to see by. There’s also ten or twelve people playing a game of capture-the-flag.

Sasha picks guns off a rack and shows them how to load them up. They’re very lightweight, more like airsoft guns than any kind of paintball gun Raleigh’s seen before. 

“Before K-Day, there was a place to play paintball not far from here,” Aleksis tells them, passing over safety glasses. “It was completely flattened by Hundun. When the radiation faded, people moved in here.”

“People set this whole place up to play paintball?”Chuck says sceptically. 

Sasha stares at him. “What, just because the world’s ending, we can’t have fun?”

Chuck shrugs. The other group start cheering as a victor becomes apparent. Sasha makes them wait until they’ve left the court entirely before ushering them on. 

The rules, as Sasha lays out for them, are simple. “We will play five rounds. At the end of every round, the team with the last person standing wins. If you get hit you are dead until the end of that round.”

The first round is over in under five minutes. Chuck and Raleigh can’t stop sniping at each other, and Aleksis can’t stop laughing at them. Sasha, unsurprisingly, is some kind of terrifying paintball ninja; she circles around, sneaks up behind them, and shoots them both in the back. 

Chuck actually stops talking in surprise. Raleigh shoulders his rifle and settles in for round two. 

-

_0_

Mako stretches, forward then back then side to side, enjoying having full access to all the flexibility of her spine. When she’s done, she stands straight and allows a technician to fit her spinal plate. She can feel Raleigh roll his eyes. 

It’s so simple for them now, stepping into their harnesses in unison, running a systems check without thought, bracing for the Conn-Pod’s drop before they’ve been warned about it. The interface lights up as the rest of their team checks in, opening commlines and feeding them data. 

_“Team Four, green across the board,”_ says Tendo, voice crackling a little through the speakers. Mako makes an adjustment, and his next words arrive without static. _“Prepare to launch.”_

The neural handshake is initiated while they’re still in the air. It’s easier every time, perhaps because she and Raleigh share much of their lives regardless of their mission status. She sees flickers, _haven't won a single round, they’re going to get their asses completely kicked, but at least they manage to take out Aleksis before Sasha finds them_ , nothing unmanageable, nothing she didn’t already know, and then they’re in sync.

 _“Team One is in position,”_ says Sasha. _“The Breach is still closed. No activity yet.”_

It’s a beautiful day, sunlight sparkling off the water. They see a pod of dolphins, sickly and tinted blue but alive and leaping from the water. 

_“Team Two is in position,”_ says one of the triplets, either Cheung or Jin. _“Something’s happening. There’s smoke.”_

Further out, all the waves are topped with a slick of kaiju blue; they turn their eyes skyward, focusing on the streaks of fluffy white clouds. 

_“Okay, we have Breach activity,”_ says Tendo. _“Looks like two Category Fours, biggest we’ve seen yet. We got a long skinny one and one big bulky fella. Codenames… Raiju and Scunner.”_

 _Like the Pokemon?_ No, it means Lightning Monster. The name Raichu is derived from the same word. Raleigh sends her a mental image, _stripy orange kaiju, shaped like a fat rat_ and Mako giggles.

 _“There will be a third,”_ says Hermann. His voice is shaking a little. _“Most likely larger.”_

 _“Team Three in position,”_ says Herc. _“The visibility’s crap down here. Tendo, what’s going on?”_

_“They’re circling. Like they’re waiting, or something. Maybe for that third kaiju.”_

_“Team One.”_ The Marshall’s voice calms them as soon as they hear it. He will not let them down. _“Can you isolate one of the kaiju?”_

Sasha’s answer is not what they’d hoped for. _“No, sir. We can’t see where they’re going.”_

The choppers signal them, and they bend their knees. Mako sets the shock absorbers while Raleigh speaks to the rest of their team. 

“Okay guys, brace for impact. Dropping in five… four… three… two… one…”

The choppers release. The fall almost seems to be in slow motion. They tilt their torso forward and spread their arms, and then they hit the water, head briefly dipping below the surface before their feet hit the bottom. They straighten up, waves crashing against their head. 

“All jaegers landed,” Raleigh says. They walk forward into the water.

 _“We got more Breach activity,”_ Tendo says.

 _“Holy sh…. sugar,”_ says Newt. _“That’s gotta be a Cat Five.”_

 _“Look at the size of that bitch!”_ says Vanessa. 

_“Doctor Sharp,”_ says the Marshall.

_“Uh, sorry, sir. Look at the size of that… slattern.”_

_“Congratulations, you just named a kaiju.”_ Tendo’s voice is a little shaky too, and they can’t tell if it’s suppressed laughter or fear. _“Category Five kaiju, codename Slattern. Breach is stable. Nothing else coming through.”_

A console beeps as they reach their assigned position, then again as each of the other jaegers check in. There’s a lot of smoke and dirt in the water. They can see beams of light from the other jaegers, and the kaiju are occasionally visible, silhouetted against them, but very little else.

“Team Four in position,” Raleigh says. “Ready when you are.”

 _“You have three hours, fifty eight minutes before the next kaiju can arrive,”_ says Hermann. 

_“Yeah, dude, but you just need to kill one and shove it through the breach with the payload.”_ Newt sounds a little sad. _“Try and bring one back for me, okay?”_

“We’ll do our best,” Raleigh says. 

_“All teams, move in,”_ says the Marshall. 

"The three kaiju are still circling, but the water is clearing as the silt drifts to the ocean floor. The jaegers have them surrounded.

Mako glances at Raleigh. They smile.

He charges up the plasma caster, and she readies the sword. They close in on the Breach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crap, it's done. Thank you so much to stormingthecastle/omnia_sol for her patience with me. 
> 
> There are a lot of pop culture references and shout outs to people I know on Tumblr/IRL in this fic; for a complete list, as well as a list of the greatest beta readers/cheerleaders EVER, click [here.](http://atia-ofthejulii.tumblr.com/post/59455887130/respite-end-notes) I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
